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An Interview with the
founder The
following is an interview with Dr. Q: Let’s start off with a positive question:
What is the greatest strength in American schools today? CR: The
greatest strength is that the American public is willing to continue to pay
taxes even as our population gets older and fewer and fewer people have any
contact with public schools. The
second strength is the pent-up creative energy of American teachers who continue
to teach even in the face of more and more social problems that spill over into
the classroom and make teaching more and more difficult. All this with salaries that barely keep
up with increased cost of living.
And finally, I think it’s a positive that Americans continue to believe
in their local school even at the same time that they say that American schools
are failing. That last one could be
a negative if they’re really in denial. Q: Then
why do we need RCL? CR:
American schools served a wonderful purpose and continue to educate more and
more people who in earlier times would not have been in school. From that viewpoint, that’s a
positive. Unfortunately, as our
neighborhoods become more and more diverse, local school cannot keep up with the
needs of the community. Too many of
our students are in schools where the least-prepared and least capable teachers
are assigned to the most
needy of students.
And even the best teachers
in the most productive environments are realizing that even many of the better
students are simply not engaged in the content of modern American
curriculum. The shopping mall high
school has outlived its usefulness.
Students are coming to high school more sophisticated in technology and
less prepared in the most basic “soft skills.” They want to learn something that they
perceive is relevant to their lives and they want to feel that they are doing
and will be doing something useful that makes a contribution to society. Parents are disenchanted
with the fact that they are expected to teach their children every night. Parents do not see their role in
education in the same way that school people do. Parents want to be engaged, but often do
not have the ability, the resources, or the energy to participate to the degree
they are often asked to. American parents need
choices. We’ve designed the RCL
method to give parents that choice.
Here is a method that tells parents, “we will give your student the
opportunity to demonstrate mastery of concepts and we will help your student
develop the ‘soft skills’ that will enable him or her to succeed whether it’s in
community college, college, work, military, or in setting up a business.”
We also say, “we want your child for nine hours a day, but there’ll be no
homework. We will not interfere
with your child’s need to play, practice, take lessons, work, or whatever else
your family would like him to do.”
RCL schools separate school from interfering with home and family
life. Q: What positive changes have you seen in
your forty years of experience? CR: When
I first went into education, we didn’t know a lot about self esteem. There’s a lot more individual attention
to students that builds good self esteem.
It is, however, important that self-esteem be built on realistic
expectations so that students do not get an inflated sense of their own
importance. We also know a lot more
about the development of the brain and how it works. I think that has helped us shape the
teaching of reading, and has also given us some important insights into the
importance of art, music and physical education. And then, there’s
technology. When we have figured
out how best to use technology (and I’m not sure we’re there yet), we will have
great power for teaching students to really exercise discernment and choice in
how they use technology. Q: What is your greatest concern about the
academic environment of schools today? CR: We
have built a billion dollar industry in testing. When assessment is used to determine
what a student knows as a beginning point in the instructional process, we have
used assessment wisely. NCLB and
the current testing environment can only lead to a generation lost because they
couldn’t pass algebra or some other test.
Too many gate keeping points in the educational process only keeps
students outside the system. I fear
that a complete generation of drop-outs that we don’t even know how to count
will be our only legacy to this period. Q: What is your greatest concern from a
sociological point of view? CR: That
bumper sticker that says, “My drop-out beat up your honor roll student” may have
more reality to it than we would like to admit. When students are disengaged from
school, lose interest, and then drop out, there is a certain logic that says the
incidences of crime are going to go up.
We cannot afford to lose an
entire generation of students—either the gifted and talented or the disabled or
those who have been disadvantaged because of their family’s economic
situation. Q: What is the role of
parents? CR:
Parents have a very important role to play in the RCL school—or in any school where their child is enrolled. Unfortunately, most parents have not
figured out how to navigate through the public school system. Each school community has its own
culture. Some are more welcoming
than others. Parents may not be
aware of the power they can have by forcing their way into what may appear to be
a closed system. They can be even more of a
factor if they are the driving force behind having a RCL school or similar
school in their neighborhood. There
is nothing more powerful than a group of parents who know they want and need
something better for their child(ren) than what is presently available to them. I am always mindful that
when we conceived of the concept for Q: Tell us about the charter school where
you were a co-founder. Why did you
open that school? CR: My
business partner and I were engaged in the business of workforce development
which is really about high school and post high school student needs. The more we worked in that area, the
more we realized that there was a need for elementary schools that were
different—especially as we hear more and more parents saying, “my child learns
differently.” We decided that to meet that
need would require an elementary (K-8) school that was organized differently to
meet the needs of the student who learns “differently.” Our design was based on teams of
students by multi-age. That is
Kindergarten and first grade was a team.
Second and third grades were a team. Fourth, fifth and sixth made up a team,
and seventh and eighth grade completed the team arrangements. We placed students not only by age, but
also considered their learning styles and where they could best
succeed. Our curriculum used thematic
instruction with a heavy emphasis on reading and math (Saxon math) to support
the social studies and science themes.
We were both trained in the use of Effective Intelligence (a program to
strengthen our ability to think out of The school is still in
operation today. Q: Talk about choice. CR: Not
everyone believes that school as we traditionally envision it is the only place
that students learn. RCL responds
to that vision in presenting a method that completely does away with the
traditional organizational structure of the school while maintaining extremely
high standards for student performance. I go back to the basic
premise that not all students are right for a given school and no school can
meet the needs of all students.
Never has there been such a diversity of students entering the doors of
schools today. The public school
model cannot serve all students equally well even though they make a noble
effort and present a marketing message that they can. As parents become more and
more sophisticated about the ways students learn and that there are
alternatives, the neighborhood school holds less and less appeal, particularly
if the parent knows that there is an alternative. That’s choice. The unfortunate part of this
discussion is that for most parents, the cost of private education is
prohibitive if, in fact, there is a private school available. Private schools in the
Most parents do not realize that they
have within themselves the power and the ability to have their own school. Yes, it takes a tremendous about of
effort to put together a charter application, but it can be done. Many parents might find that it would
take less effort to start their own charter school that it is currently
requiring to cope with the school system when the child’s needs are not being
met. As the charter movement
becomes more widely accepted, public schools will also improve even though the
message is out there that charter schools cream off the best students and take
money from public schools that are already struggling. There is truth to this
statement, but there is also a reality that many education dollars are spent
very unwisely in the public school system.
Many dollars that should be in the classroom and supporting teachers are
used in administrative costs and a top-heavy bureaucracy. Those are choices that parents and the
community allow to happen in the election of board members. In other words, choice affects
education at many levels. The best example of choice
is when parents choose to home-school their child. I admire and have encouraged and coached
some parents for whom this is the perfect alternative at that time and place in
that child’s educational experience. Since there are no reliable counts of
the number of home-schooled children, we don’t know how many families are making
that choice. But it is a choice
that requires tremendous commitment. Q: What do you have to offer the
educational community? CR: My
doctoral dissertation is on Teachers as Leaders. I am firmly committed to the teacher in
the classroom as the lynchpin and future of American education. There is no part of the RCL method
that is contradictory to best practices that are currently being used
somewhere. The difference is that
the RCL method puts together all the component parts in a coherent package. To date, there are beacons
of light as foundations, government agencies and other funding sources give
money to a particular school to implement whatever program that school has
selected. Unfortunately, each group
of educators (and often including parents) selects a program that they perceive
will be the silver bullet to solve whatever problem they have identified. When the silver bullet doesn’t provide
instant results, the entire program is usually discarded only to be replaced by
another program.
RCL method challenges all
the assumptions at the same time and brings together a total look at the way we
organize for learning and present content for learning. This program reflects over forty years
of seeing the silver bullets fail.
It also responds positively to all of the recommendations presented in Breaking Ranks II, the report of the
Governors’ Council and the Business Roundtable. I am energized when I
present the program to educators and they realize that I am not here to
criticize what they are presently doing.
I am suggesting only that they take the boldest steps to change an entire
system all at the same time. In addition to completing
the curriculum for the RCL high school, I am working on a project called “School
in a Box” which will have all the tools for any group that wants to open their
own school. I envision groups of
teachers or groups of parents or groups made up of various school community
stakeholders sitting down and saying, “Let’s build our own school.” Nothing would please me more than to
assist in that process. On a business level, of
course we do provide other services.
Our company
makes available consulting services for groups who want to work on
improving the schools they have and marketing materials for good schools to get
out their message. We also tutor
and provide educational counseling in the |