Ted Dintersmith - What School Could Be: Insights and Inspiration from Teachers across America

Dintersmith knows how to turn a road trip into an educationhis own and ours. He also knows how to tell a story, to hook you with each tale of children enthusiastically engaged in meaningful, motivated learning. Rather than a conventional critique of education, this is a celebration of extraordinarily innovative and dedicated teachers. It leaves the reader fundamentally rethinking how we do school, and a vision of how we should be doing it.

Deborah Stipek, Professor and former Dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Education

Ted Dintersmith fuels a vitally important discussion about the need to transform education and provide more teambased, experiential learning opportunities to prepare students for the twenty-first-century economy. Dintersmith fosters a dialogue for sharing best practices and harnessing new approaches that will yield tangible results for students.

Doug Burgum, Governor of North Dakota

If you want to understand what education looks like now and what it can and should look like in the future, start with this book. Its lively, accessible, smart, clear-eyed, and free from the partisanship that clouds so much of the discussion in education.

James E. Ryan, Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education

What School Could Be shares thought-provoking stories about critical, positive changes happening in schools across the country. As Ted Dintersmith shows, and as I have seen in New Hampshire, empowering teachers in existing public schools allows them to arm students with the tools they need to succeed. These examples can help all policymakers focus on what actually works as we move this important discussion forward.

U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan

Ted Dintersmith took a serious education road trip and came away with a message of hope, which this book presents through the stories of scores of fearless educators around the United States who dare to do things better every day. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to know what school could be.

Pasi Sahlberg, author of Finnish Lessons 2.0 and FinnishED Leadership

This is a must-read for anyone looking to understand how our education system is impacting students in all fifty states, and the path forward to a better future.

Adam Braun, New York Times bestselling author and CEO of MissionU

What School Could Be is a powerful book that will inspire parents and teachers by showing how genuine, determined, and sensitive change can actually be achieved.

Nancy Faust Sizer, coauthor of The Students Are Watching

What School Could Be presents relevant, practical ideas backed by a huge number of examples of the innovative practices and programs taking place in schools across the United States. Ted Dintersmith also provides an essential critique of standardized tests and makes a huge contribution by showing why the idea of college for all is false.

Anthony Cody, author of The Educator and the Oligarch: A Teacher Challenges the Gates Foundation

Very few books can leave you feeling both mad as hell and hopeful. This is one of them. Dintersmith has focused all his considerable passion, energy, and intellect on understanding the many ways that our educational system is broken, and how it can be fixed. Were failing our kids and our country, and we can do a lot better. Read this book to learn how.

Andrew McAfee, cofounder of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and coauthor of Machine | Platform | Crowd and The Second Machine Age

This is a critically important book that every educator should read and use. It offers a bold and credible account of why change is desperately needed in our schoolsand how its actually happening.

Brad Gustafson, elementary school principal and author of Renegade Leadership: Creating Innovative Schools for Digital-Age Students

What School Could Be is uplifting. It bolsters the case of teachers everywhere, validating their diligent, dedicated, and determined efforts to help their students grow, learn, and achieve.

Jeffrey Huguenin, elementary school principal

What School Could Be

What School Could Be

Insights and Inspiration from Teachers across America

Ted Dintersmith

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON AND OXFORD

Copyright 2018 by Ted Dintersmith

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to permissions@press.princeton.edu

Published by Princeton University Press

41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR

press.princeton.edu

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017956534

ISBN: 978-0-691-18061-8

eISBN: 978-1-400-89037-8

Ver. 1.3

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

Editorial: Vickie Kearn and Lauren Bucca

Production Editorial: Ellen Foos

Text design: Carmina Alvarez-Gaffin

Jacket design: Kathleen Lynch/Black Kat Design

Jacket photos: iStockphoto

Production: Erin Suydam

Copyeditor: Jenn Backer

If we teach todays students as we taught yesterdays, we rob them of tomorrow.

John Dewey

The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next.

Abraham Lincoln

Contents

Prologue

A few years ago, I connected some dots. Machine intelligence is racing ahead, wiping out millions of routine jobs as it reshapes the competencies needed to thrive. Our education system is stuck in time, training students for a world that no longer exists. Absent profound change in our schools, adults will keep piling up on lifes sidelines, jeopardizing the survival of civil society. While not preordained, this is where America is headed. Yet few understand.

A looming crisis makes you do the unusual. Ive done my share. For starters, I organized the documentary Most Likely to Succeed (MLTS), an official selection of two dozen leading film festivals including Sundance, and screened in over four thousand communities around the world. I teamed with education thought-leader Tony Wagner to write the book Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era. Both the film and the book address the urgent need to reimagine education for the innovation era.

As these works gained traction, I started getting invited to speak to groups. Various aspects of my background helped me connect with audiences. My career spans business and public policy (start-ups, venture capital, congressional staff, U.S. delegate to the United Nations). Im a parent of two recent high school graduates. I grew up in very modest circumstances and was the first in my family to go to college. I respect the practical (my dad was a carpenter), as well as the liberal arts (I majored in physics and English). And I love meeting teachers, who in turn seemed to appreciate a businessperson who advocates for trusting them.

Like so much in life, one thing led to another. Amid so many stimulating discussions, I kept getting questions I couldnt answer. How can one person make a difference? How can an existing school transform itself? Where do we begin? These questions, from people who care deeply, gnawed at me.

So I took a trip.