Dan Domenech - Personalizing 21st Century Education

2016 by Dan Domenech, Morton Sherman, and John L. Brown. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN 9781119080770 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781119080787 (ePDF)

ISBN 9781119080794 (ePub)

Cover image: Rob Lewine/Getty Images, Inc.

Cover design: Wiley

FIRST EDITION

It may seem odd that three individuals who have spent their careers as part of the establishment would offer as radical a departure from it as we present in the following pages. The fact is that educators have long wanted to be liberated from the regulatory chains that bind us and the twenty-first century has introduced the enabling technology to make personalized learning a reality. We dedicate this book to the future of public education in the United States and to those champions for children who will lead the transformation.

Daniel A. Domenech, PhD, is Executive Director AASA, the School Superintendents Association. Domenech has more than forty years of experience in public education, including twenty-seven years in the superintendency. For seven years Domenech served as superintendent of the Fairfax County, Virginia, Public Schools, the twelfth largest school system in the United States. He serves on numerous boards including the National and Virginia Boards for Communities in Schools.

Morton Sherman, EdD, is Associate Executive Director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association. Also with more than forty years of experience in public education, Sherman has served as a school superintendent in four states, including in Alexandria, Virginia, and Cherry Hill, New Jersey. He is the author of more than three hundred articles and has received national recognition for his work on mental health issues, community service, strategic planning, and the arts.

John L. Brown, PhD, is Executive Director of Curriculum Design and Instructional Services, Alexandria City Public Schools. He has also developed numerous professional publications for ASCD (including coauthoring A Handbook for the Art and Science of Teaching with Robert J. Marzano). He has also served as Director of Staff Development and Program Development for Prince George's County Public Schools, Maryland.

Announcing the arrival of a new Center for Personalized Health in the greater Washington, D.C., area, a flier for INOVA Health touted the following innovations: It will be a one-of-a-kind, internationally prominent center for genomic research, personalized health care, and associated life science commercial development, the notice explained, proudly declaring, We've set our sights no lower than becoming the world's epicenter for translational cancer research and patient care. The notice then proceeded to sketch the various features of their Personalized Medicine Education Center.

Although far from a new approach in the medical field, personalization has been steadily gaining traction in recent years. In the current medical model, a patient (at least one lucky enough to be well insured) generally enters a facility and receives personally tailored care, diagnosis, and treatment. Let's be clear from the beginning that personalization does not mean avoidance of goals and standards of practice. In fact, those standards are personally adjusted to meet individual needs. Such a personalized approach has become even more pronounced with the rise of concierge medicine, in which patients pay premiums for increased access, attention, and specialization.

This model (based on access, attention, and specialization, which are the hallmarks of personalization) can be found in many other areas. Several years ago a local chiropractor had his phone answered with a cheerful, I can help you. How striking that is compared to How can I help you?

Department stores have personal shoppers. Hotels encourage and some chains expect that the staff provide caring, attentive, personalized service. Examples of personalized education are plentiful.

Yes, even in education we can find emerging examples of personalized efforts to help students learn well what we expect of them. These might be seen as personalized pathways, not races, to the dreams we hold for the children we serve. And they might be seen as counter to the lock step, this-is-the-way-it's-done approach that the recent Race to the Top encouraged.

We came to this project with one overarching question: How can we raise the level of personalization in education so that each and every child learns to the highest, deepest, and broadest possible levels? What existing models might we look to for guidance, insight, and inspiration? In education there is a long history of adhering to existing, traditional formulas and structures rather than adjusting to try to accommodate the needs of the student. This pattern needs to change. We need to find ways to modify or even radically rework this existing system to more adequately address the specific, varied needs of individual students. This health care flier was striking in that if we replaced the words