# data[].attributes.headline
Birmingham Covington: Building a Student-Centered School

# data[].attributes.subject
Birmingham Covington: Building a Student-Centered School

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Educators take on the role of guides and motivate students to direct their own learning.

A group of middle school students in full beekeeping gear examines one of the hives their school keeps in the woods nearby. "Ooh, there's honey!" says one excitedly. "I see nectar!" says another.

These eager fifth and sixth graders from Birmingham Covington, a public magnet school in suburban Michigan focused on science and technology, are empowered to become self-directed learners through hands-on experiences in and outside their classroom.

Birmingham Covington's student-centered philosophy is embedded throughout the curriculum, from third- and fourth-grade classes focused on teaching individual resourcefulness to an almost wholly independent capstone class in seventh and eighth grade called Thinkering Studio. Teachers at the school often say they're "teaching kids to teach themselves" and rarely answer questions directly; instead they ask students to consider other sources of information first. Even the classrooms, with their spacious communal tables and movable walls, emphasize fluid group and peer-to-peer dynamics over teacher-led instruction.

The 650-student school offers grades 3 through 8 only and pairs grades together, following research that shows that mixing age groups accelerates learning. For more than a decade, Birmingham Covington's students have ranked at or above the 95th percentile in overall performance for all Michigan elementary and middle schools.

By relentlessly focusing the classwork on student interest and independence, the educators at Birmingham Covington hope to transform students into active learners who will be successful throughout their lifetimes.

"When you get kids collaborating together, they become more resourceful and they see themselves as experts," said Mark Morawski, who's been the principal since 2013. "All of a sudden you've opened the ceiling to what kids are able to do, and they surprise you sometimes."

Solving Real-World Problems: The Bee Project

Birmingham Covington's unique bee project, like much of the coursework prioritized at the school, was driven by student interest. After reading an article about the extinction of honeybees in their science literacy class, fifth- and sixth-grade students said they wanted to do something to help.

In the class, which combines inquiry-based science and English language arts (ELA), students build their research, literacy, and collaboration skills through small group projects aimed at effecting lasting change around real-world problems. Working on a range of activities-from building a website to managing a real beehive-students become more active and engaged learners, teachers say.

"Science literacy is teaching our kids to be curious about the world around them, with the problems they identify," said ELA teacher Pauline Roberts, who co-teaches the class. "Even as students, they are learning how to become effective agents of change. It's bigger than the science content-it's about helping to develop the citizens that we hope our children become."

Teaching Resourcefulness

Throughout Birmingham Covington, both coursework and instruction push students to learn lifelong skills like independence and resourcefulness, which teachers encourage early on in the primary grades.

Third- and fourth-grade teacher Jessie Heckman says she empowers her students to become more resourceful by solving common problems with the support of their classmates. Instead of raising their hands when they have a question or encounter a hurdle, for example, Heckman's students clip clothespins to their computers and fellow students circulate around to troubleshoot-a system she calls the help desk.

"Kids need to learn teamwork-based skills because every other class in any other subject that they have-third through eighth grade-requires them to work in different sized groups accomplishing different tasks," Heckman explains.

Modeling Collaboration: Teacher Labs

Students aren't the only ones at Birmingham Covington improving their collaboration skills-teachers also identify as a "community of learners" who use planned, peer-to-peer feedback to help each other raise student outcomes throughout the school.

The school's voluntary Teacher Labs-facilitated by an instructional coach and organized around a clear, written protocol-enable teachers to reflect on their craft with support from their peers. Through the labs, small groups of teachers observe each other's classes and then offer constructive feedback around a stated objective.

"We're really asking teachers to step outside of their comfort zones," said Roberts, who serves as the lead facilitator in the labs. "We are creatures who live behind closed doors. To experience being in someone else's classroom is really powerful."

Increasing Independence for Older Learners

As they near the end of their time at the school, Birmingham Covington seventh- and eighth-grade students are accustomed to self-reliance and problem-solving. They put these skills to use in Thinkering Studio, an elective class where they design their own independent learning projects, and Engage, a class focused on design thinking-a system of solving problems that follows the steps of inquiry, ideation, prototyping, and testing.

In Engage, teachers Roy McCloud and Mathew Brown guide students to work on various self-directed, team-oriented projects like designing a new sport for third graders or building a roller coaster. Their support and feedback direct students toward the right resources while encouraging them to dig deeper: Did students ask the right questions? Did they get the right information? Did they go to other groups for feedback?

In these culminating classes, as in the curriculum more generally, teachers act as guides rather than instructors, directing students toward helpful resources but ultimately insisting they solve their own problems.

Grades 3-8 | Bloomfield Township, MI

Enrollment

650 | Public, Suburban

Per Pupil Expenditures

Free / Reduced Lunch

5%

Data is from the 2015-2016 academic year.

This innovative, student-centered approach to learning-the bedrock of the school's vision-takes the long view, helping students develop skills and interests they can continue to draw on after they leave the school. The school believes that this model better prepares students for real-world challenges, since modern workplaces are increasingly collaborative and involve complex, interdisciplinary problem solving.

"The ultimate questions we're going to be asked by future employers is 'Can this person work well in a team? Does this person have the ability to problem solve and critically think?'" said Morawski. "Because our students are more resourceful, they have more intrinsic motivation in the learning process and ultimately, are learning to be learners."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Birmingham Covington: Building a Student-Centered School

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Educators take on the role of guides and motivate students to direct their own learning. A group of middle school students in full beekeeping gear examines one of the hives their school keeps in the woods nearby. "Ooh, there's honey!" says one excitedly. "I see nectar!" says another.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
NPR: Freedom to Explore | Khan Lab School

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
While both are at the forefront of student-centered learning, they have very different student populations. Lighthouse serves an economically and ethnically diverse community. The Khan Lab School serves mainly higher-income families living and working in the heart of Silicon Valley.

# data[].attributes.headline
How One Teacher Let Go of Control To Focus On Student-Centered Approaches

# data[].attributes.subject
How One Teacher Let Go of Control To Focus On Student-Centered Approaches

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When Kristine Riley looks back on how she used to teach her students, she sees order and control. Her third, fourth and fifth grade gifted-and-talented classes had been structured and orderly, and students sat in designated seats. She had assigned the same tasks to every student and had hoped for roughly the same answers from all of them. She used to believe that it was her responsibility as a teacher to impart information to her students. Riley had decided what was important and students were expected to learn what they were taught.

Riley is also a conscientious teacher and regularly looks for ways to better herself on behalf of her students in Edison, New Jersey public schools. So after a colleague she admired and teachers she followed on social media began extolling the learning advantages of letting go of control in the classroom, Riley decided to give it a try. "I started out small," she said. It took about a year, maybe a year and a half, to abandon her top-down approach to teaching and replace it with what she calls "structured chaos." She shared her findings at a recent EdCamp gathering in New Jersey.

"In the beginning, it was uncomfortable," Riley said. She had to let go of her micro-managing mentality and embrace the notion that the students needed to drive their learning-which meant less of her standing at the front of the classroom. But over time, she came up with a range of classroom strategies that put students squarely in charge.
GIVING STUDENTS CHOICE
Student choice is central to her methods. When she assigns projects, Riley now offers options for students to choose from. Some assignments will include "menus" of questions, for example, that ask students to pick what intrigues them from the "breakfast," "lunch" and "dinner" selections-with a "dessert" choice for those hungry to learn more. In a third grade science unit on oil spills, to name another, Riley proposed different ways to explore the problem, including researching the Keystone XL pipeline and studying cruise ship pollution. Students could then pick an assignment that suited their personal inclination: they could write a song, create a commercial or build a website to share what they learned. Along with choice of subjects, students also have freedom to move at their own pace. And with their teacher's input, students set their own goals, reflect on their work and assess themselves. What's not allowed in class? Students are prohibited from declaring "I'm done." Instead, Riley invites students to ask themselves new questions, like "How can I make this better?" or "What else can I add?"

Rather than have Riley assign seats, students now choose their own work place: a standing desk, an overturned crate or a spot next to the windowsill. Students are free to move around within the room, from one station to another; they're not expected to sit still for the duration of class. Riley encourages them to find a place and get comfortable-ideally, where they will feel engaged and productive.

And as a way to underscore the confidence she places on the students to direct their own learning, the children are free to select their work partners. "This was the most scary for me," Riley said. To prevent children from picking their best friends or ostracizing anyone, she guided the children in creating norms on how to select a work partner. The model they devised was simple: work together, not against each other; compromise; split tasks fairly. Again, Riley encourages the kids to think of their partner as someone with whom they could work successfully-not just a friend, or someone with identical skills, but a fellow student who would contribute to the project.
TOO MUCH FREEDOM?
Does such freedom of choice deter young students from pursuing unfamiliar subjects? Will inviting children to present their work in the way that best suits their interests discourage them from taking risks? Riley says no. "I encourage them to try something different," she said. She is clear about letting students know that she doesn't want the same old thing, just repurposed, every time they turn in an assignment. "I tell them, 'show me that you're challenging yourself to try something new.'"

And to counterbalance the self-directed nature of students' learning, Riley also emphasizes the need for community within the classroom. All students are responsible for clean up and each week Riley picks one empowering quote from the many that students have submitted for consideration. Riley posts the quote at the front of the class and students then strive to live by the saying-for example, "Be yourself, because everybody else is already taken." At the end of the week, students decide who best embodied the quote, and that student then gets to "keep" the quote.

Riley's students prefer the new classroom environment, she said. "They enjoy what's going on in the class so much more," she said. Academically, the kids dive deeper when they determine where they're headed. When Riley introduced programmable robots to the students, for example, each work group sought to develop a different robot capability. And while some groups followed Riley's instructions on programming, others turned to online tutorials to learn more. "They're embracing it and running with it," Riley said about her spirited classroom.

Parents seem to love what's happening in her classroom, Riley said, in part because their excited children tinker with school projects at home. School officials also support her new approach. "My supervisor encourages me to try different things, and is very supportive of all that's going on," she said-so much so that he is trying to push the rest of the school to adopt this mindset. Riley is convinced that these student-centered methods can apply as well in general education classes as in gifted and talented programs. What has changed for her, as she has let go of control in her classes? "Every day, they continue to surprise me," Riley said. "They blow my mind."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How One Teacher Let Go of Control To Focus On Student-Centered Approaches

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When Kristine Riley looks back on how she used to teach her students, she sees order and control. Her third, fourth and fifth grade gifted-and-talented classes had been structured and orderly, and students sat in designated seats. She had assigned the same tasks to every student and had hoped for roughly the same answers from all of them.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This is an exciting era in education. We're all starting to realize that the most effective way to prepare learners for the uncertain sands of the new economy is to take a bold step: to move from teacher-centered to student-centered classrooms with rigor.

This isn't just another fad that will come and go; this work requires each teacher to unlearn and relearn deeply ingrained pedagogical techniques that have placed the responsibility for all learning in the teacher's hands. In turn, students are now encouraged to struggle productively so they can build the resilience and self-reliance they'll need for success in college and the global workplace.

To bring about this second-order change, we need to equip kids with soft interpersonal and critical-thinking skills. Through partnerships with schools throughout the US, we're seeing the results of these instructional shifts and gaining a clear picture of teachers' challenges. Specifically, we've identified two things that teachers tend to do to help students that actually hinder learning.

Rescuing

A struggling child's first instinct is to rely on adults to tell him what to do. Kids know that if they keep waiting or ask enough questions, someone will eventually help them. Far too many teachers encourage this pattern, asking leading or loaded questions until they arrive at the answer for the students. It's human nature to assist others who are struggling -- especially children -- but to get students using higher-order thinking skills, we need to break this habit.

When I was the principal of Acreage Pines Elementary in Florida, my teachers had a lot of difficulty changing this behavior. Some would physically step away from kids when they caught themselves rescuing. Some even wore rubber bands that they could pop as a reminder. I'm certainly not advocating self-abuse, but visual or physical cues are definitely helpful. Once students accept that they need to rely more on peers and less on teachers, they unlearn the habit of waiting for answers.

This pattern is also prevalent among teachers and leaders. When teachers aren't sure which strategies to use or how to execute specific techniques, they're inclined to wait until a principal, coach or other observer tells them what to do. As with students, it's critical to create an environment that helps teachers engage in the productive struggle and rely on their peers to find solutions.

Robbing

Traditional instruction is full of robbed moments. It may seem kind to spoon-feed information to students, tell them what to think and provide experiences that require right and wrong answers, but in the long run, the lecture-focused format robs them of valuable opportunities to think critically, assimilate information and draw conclusions.

Children are fully capable of determining what's important -- and they need to get even better at doing so. It's our duty to structure lessons around discovery rather than rob them of high-level learning by telling. I can't stress this enough: It's our duty.

New-economy skills

In Who Moved My Standards? Joyful Teaching in an Age of Change, Michael Toth describes the shifts that teachers need to make to help students develop "new-economy skills." He strongly emphasizes the notions that:

Students can't be directly instructed into becoming critical thinkers and problem solvers.

Too much support can prevent students from developing critical-thinking skills.

At Acreage Pines, our teachers worked diligently in their PLCs to plan lessons to move students toward effective team-centered problem solving. Little by little, students also become increasingly comfortable with engaging in their own interactive teams. There, they practiced academic language, improved their verbal and social skills and provided emotional and academic support for team members -- fellow students.

Believe me: It's worth the effort.

What surprised us the most was how all students flourished in the learner-centered setting. With the support of their peers, disadvantaged children and those with disabilities learning in inclusion classrooms became skilled at using academic vocabulary and honing their own thinking skills. At the same time, higher-achieving students deepened their understanding as they mentored their classmates.

The shift from teacher-centered to student-centered classrooms made our entire school an exciting place to be. That kind of enthusiasm is contagious, and it makes me so happy to know that other administrators have toured Acreage Pines and resolved to replicate the work in their own buildings.

There's nothing more rewarding than being at the forefront of such an influential and important transformation -- one that will change the trajectory of the future for countless children in classrooms throughout the country.

Amy Dujon led one of the nation's first Schools for Rigor initiatives as an elementary school principal and director of leadership development in partnership with Learning Sciences International, bringing in a powerful new vision for strengthening core instruction. This work ignited her passion for student-centered, standards-based instruction, and she remains relentless in her focus to grow professionally and personally. Amy is currently a practice leader for LSI, working with districts and leaders across the country to support their transformation and implementation, and she has written the forthcoming book, The Gritty Truth: Eight Phases of Growth to Instructional Rigor.

____________________________________

Like this article? Sign up for ASCD SmartBrief to get news like this in your inbox, or check out all of SmartBrief's education newsletters, covering career and technical education, educational leadership, math education and more.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This is an exciting era in education. We're all starting to realize that the most effective way to prepare learners for the uncertain sands of the new economy is to take a bold step: to move from teacher-centered to student-centered classrooms with rigor.

# data[].attributes.headline
THE ART AND SCIENCE OF DEVELOPING STUDENT AGENCY

# data[].attributes.subject
THE ART AND SCIENCE OF DEVELOPING STUDENT AGENCY

# data[].attributes.headline
Guiding Students to Drive Their Curriculum

# data[].attributes.subject
Guiding Students to Drive Their Curriculum

# data[].attributes.body
A structured framework for engaging middle school students in planning out their own lines of inquiry. (MS at SLA in Philly)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The last few days before winter break are often a wash. Students-and teachers-are exhausted and distracted. This year, however, the fifth and sixth graders at Science Leadership Academy Middle School (SLA-MS) in Philadelphia were more engaged than ever.

On the last school day of December, we had students collaborating, debating ideas, writing furiously, and standing on chairs to proudly present their thinking. One student exhorted his peers, "Listen up, because this matters for all of us."

These students were voting to define their own curriculum for the remainder of the school year. There's no question that we need to value student voice in classrooms. But how do we shift from creating space for student voice to centering student ideas and creating curricula with students? At SLA-MS, this question has guided the development of Humanities content organized around our yearlong theme, bravery.

Bring in Student Experience From the Start

Before arriving at that vote before winter break, we needed to build common ground within our classroom. In order to create an equal footing for our 180 students, all with their own experiences and background knowledge, we started with something each student is uniquely expert in: themselves.

The first project of the year was a literacy autobiography in which students thought about their personal connections to bravery. They interrogated moments in their lives when they needed to be brave as readers, writers, speakers, or listeners. In sharing this work, students got to know one another other as learners, and they created a shared definition of bravery.

In their second project, students worked in small groups to create a guide to being brave in middle school. Their research for this project included reading the same fiction books as a class and identifying commonalities in their middle school experiences up to that point.

But learning through reflection and building community are not simply exercises for the first six weeks of school-they're methods we can use continuously to help build a culture based on learning from one another.

Build Shared Background Knowledge

These first projects emphasized that students can learn by reflecting on themselves and by reflecting with their peers. But when it comes to historical content, we couldn't expect students to learn out of the ether. As teachers we needed to create structures for students to research and discover, authentically.

At SLA-MS, this work happened with our third project of the year: Bravery in the Neighborhood. Each class of Humanities students explored our school's neighborhood in West Philadelphia. This included structured observational walks, internet research, conversation, and written reflection coming from our experiences.

Through our shared research, we identified sites that represented historical bravery. These ranged from the location where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "Freedom Now" speech to murals on the side of our local library branch highlighting the Lenni Lenape, who once made up the majority of the area's population. Students researched these sites-with help from teachers-and took their research through a writing process to create podcasts that we strung together as an audio tour of the neighborhood.

Across the classrooms, students became experts in different aspects of our neighborhood's history. With teacher-created structures, students were able to identify topics of interest, explore these deeply, and create a lasting artifact that others, including their peers, learned from.

Create Shared Inquiry With Students

Interest drives motivation in learning. Ultimately, students want to explore questions and topics they care about and see as important. We also know that students, particularly middle school students, crave belonging. They need to feel that they belong in their school and in their classroom community. Being part of group decision making helps create that feeling. In guiding students to work together-whether in small groups or as a whole class or even a whole grade-we can identify what matters and craft this into essential questions that propel future units of study.

In our case, we used information from our walk to create a timeline of historical bravery in our neighborhood. Through activities focused on noticing and wondering, students pulled out major themes they saw in the timeline. We defined importance and used the definition to create pitches for the themes we were considering focusing on for the rest of the year.

On the final day before winter break, students voted as we whittled down our original list of more than 30 themes until we were left with these four: War, Civil Rights, Freedom, and Changes Over Time.

These themes were our lines of inquiry for the spring. How do individuals become braver over time? How do societies become braver over time? We used the American Revolution as a lens, followed by civil rights in the U.S., using the questions: What does it mean to fight for freedom? In each context, who is free as a result? Who isn't?

Curricular freedom is a gift when trying to cocreate with students. But even with most required content or sequences of topics, we can still center students' ideas by starting with personal connections, building shared background knowledge, and determining what matters in order to ask and explore our next set of questions.

When we help students drive the curriculum, they see themselves as the ones with the knowledge and the ones eager to do the learning.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Guiding Students to Drive Their Curriculum

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The last few days before winter break are often a wash. Students-and teachers-are exhausted and distracted. This year, however, the fifth and sixth graders at Science Leadership Academy Middle School (SLA-MS) in Philadelphia were more engaged than ever. On the last school day of December, we had students collaborating, debating ideas, writing furiously, and standing on chairs to proudly present their thinking.

# data[].attributes.headline
Putting Students in Charge of Their Learning

# data[].attributes.subject
Putting Students in Charge of Their Learning

# data[].attributes.body
Giving students choices and the means to assess their progress fosters metacognition and independence.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Putting Students in Charge of Their Learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Giving students choices and the means to assess their progress fosters metacognition and independence.

# data[].attributes.headline
What Happens When Students Control Their Own Education?

# data[].attributes.subject
What Happens When Students Control Their Own Education?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When a New Hampshire district found itself struggling with low test scores and high turnover, it made a radical decision: Flip the traditional model and let kids take over the classrooms.

In an 11th-grade English class at Pittsfield Middle High School in rural New Hampshire, Jenny Wellington's students were gathered in a circle debating Henry David Thoreau's positions on personal responsibility.

"Do you think Thoreau really was about 'every man for himself?'" asked one 16-year-old boy.

"He lived alone in the woods and didn't want to pay taxes," another student shots back. "So, yeah."

Sitting off to the side, Wellington took rapid notes. When she noticed the conversation being dominated by a couple of voices, she politely suggested someone else chime in. Otherwise, she stayed out of the way and let the discussion take shape.

Welcome to student-centered learning at Pittsfield, a grade 7-12 campus in its third year of an innovative approach to education.

"There used to be a lot more of teachers talking at you-it didn't matter if you were ready to move on. When the teacher was done with the topic that was it," said Noah Manteau, a senior this year at Pittsfield. "This is so much better."

Educators, researchers, and policymakers at the state and national level are keeping close tabs on Pittsfield, which has become an incubator for a critical experiment in school reform. The goal: a stronger connection between academic learning and the kind of real-world experience that advocates say can translate into postsecondary success.

Pittsfield, a former mill town, has about 4,500 predominately white residents, and the Middle High School serves about 260 residents. Fifty-six percent of them qualify for free or reduced-price meals. Student-centered learning is fully in place in the high school, and elements of it are being phased in at the middle-school level. The long-term plan is to eventually add it to the nearby elementary school.

Pittsfield's superintendent, John Freeman, is among the first to acknowledge that adopting student-centered learning was a bold move. Student performance on statewide assessments has long been uneven, and teachers and administrators know there is still significant work to be done. But test scores are just one indicator, and based on multiple other measures, including higher graduation and college-going rates, Freeman feels confident that student-centered learning is moving Pittsfield in the right direction.
"There used to be a lot more of teachers talking at you. "This is so much better."
At Pittsfield, student-led discussions, small-group work, and individual projects dominate. The traditional grading system has been replaced with a matrix of "competencies," detailing the skills and knowledge students are expected to master in each class. Students are graded on a scale of 1 to 4-with 2.5 considered "proficient"-and those numbers are converted into letter grades for their transcripts. Teachers meet at regular intervals to review how closely their instruction is aligning with the competencies; they use an online database to continually track individual student growth. Additional online classes allow students to further challenge themselves and earn college credit. Family engagement is considered a key part of each student's progress. And the Extended Learning Opportunities (ELO) program allows students to earn credit for workplace experiences that reinforce their academic studies, such as interning at a dentist's office or the local radio station.

All of this means students are shouldering more responsibility for their own learning. And they are expected to develop the kind of critical thinking skills-not just rote knowledge-required for "real world" success. As a result, advocates of student-centered learning say it provides superior preparation for both college and career.

As senior Ryan Marquis put it, "I had to switch from 'Here's your study guide and here's your answer sheet' to 'How do you want to learn the content, and how can we support you?'"

Student-centered learning in Pittsfield-located in the Suncook Valley about 40 minutes north of Manchester-began to take shape in 2008, when the district asked for community input on ways to improve local schools and found overwhelming support for more personalized approaches. The following year, Pittsfield's high school was rated one of the state's lowest-performing, based on students' standardized test scores. The one benefit of that dismal ranking was that it later qualified Pittsfield for a $1 million federal School Improvement Grant (SIG).

This set in motion intensive public-private partnerships, and the creation of a community working group to help come up with a new instructional approach. After extensive research, planning, and conversations with parents, the district opted for the student-centered learning model, and the plan was implemented in January 2012.

"People in our community wanted schools to be places where students' passions and interests were recognized, and their deficits and weaknesses addressed," said Freeman. "We're thinking not just about what happens within these walls, but preparing them for success at least seven years beyond high school graduation."

Around the same time, the district was considering how to implement New Hampshire's mandate that high schools use a competency-based model, rather than traditional seat-time hours, to award course credit. New Hampshire had also adopted the Common Core State Standards, which set grade-level expectations for what students know and can do, but do not dictate classroom instruction.
"They all get feedback from me every time, after every discussion. That's hard data for them, and they love it."
Rather than becoming competing forces, this unique combination of circumstances provided Pittsfield with enviable synergies, education experts say. "One of the downfalls of personalized learning has often been a regression to the lowest standard," said Sonja Santelises, vice president of K-12 policy and practice for the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Education Trust. The confluence of the Common Core, high school competencies, and student-centered learning in Pittsfield, said Santelises, offered "a rare opportunity" to set high expectations for learning that are supported by a rigorous and innovative instructional framework. At the same time, she added, the community's buy-in has been critical, particularly during the earliest planning stages. Accountability must also be a top priority, Santelises said: Teachers should be continually checking students' progress against the standards and adjusting instruction accordingly.

"These are not just nice things to have-they're absolutely essential to have if you're going to bring about meaningful change," Santelises said.

What is student-centered learning? In its broadest sense, it describes an approach where teachers function more as coaches than lecturers. While it's gaining momentum nationally, the definition is still evolving. The term is sometimes used-incorrectly, say the model's advocates-to describe any kind of free-form learning that is not "teacher centered." The New England-based Nellie Mae Education Foundation defines the model as personalized instruction that allows students to advance at their own rate, with opportunities for "anywhere, anytime" learning outside the confines of the traditional school day and building. Students must also have input in determining how they will learn, choosing among opportunities such as online classes and independent study. Project-based learning, in which students build connections between the academic course content and their own interests and career goals, is another popular route.

According to Rebecca Wolfe, director of the nonprofit Jobs For the Future's Students at the Center project, student-centered learning shares the Common Core's underlying goal: helping students develop their critical thinking skills while better preparing them for the real-world challenges of college and career. "They are absolutely complementary-and should be part of the same whole-when done right," Wolfe said.

Student-centered learning is not without its critics. Some question the philosophical premise, while others worry about the potentially daunting logistical requirements. There are also concerns that student-centered learning can result in a chaotic classroom environment, and that some students won't progress quickly enough to cover the required curriculum. Learners who already trail their peers could be the most vulnerable.

"The idea of 'student-centered everything' is one of those orthodoxies where it's easy to fall off the end of the cliff," said Robert Pondiscio, senior fellow and vice president for external affairs at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington, D.C. "It works a lot better in the content areas than in skills-based instruction like reading comprehension, for example."

As for letting students demonstrate proficiency by non-traditional means, Pondiscio said "as long as the projects are rigorous and challenging, I see no problem with allowing students to produce work product that interests and engages them-provided it's aligned to the content expectations."
They are expected to develop the kind of critical thinking skills, required for real-world success.
Recent research from the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education found the student-centered model is working in unexpected places, including urban high schools with high percentages of minority and low-income students. Consider a June 2014 study looking at student-centered learning in four northern California public high schools, all smaller, open-enrollment campuses. The Stanford researchers concluded that regular assessments were helping teachers better monitor student progress and adjust instruction accordingly. Students were also finding ways to connect their learning to their own interests and the wider community outside of school.

"Students in the study schools exhibited greater gains in achievement than their peers, had higher graduation rates, were better prepared for college, and showed greater persistence in college," said Stanford University Professor and SCOPE Faculty Director Linda Darling-Hammond in a statement about the new research. "Student-centered learning proves to be especially beneficial to economically disadvantaged students and students whose parents have not attended college."

At Pittsfield, the shift to student-led discussions was a fairly steep learning curve for everyone, including teacher Jenny Wellington. To build her lesson on Thoreau, Wellington first turned to the school's "competencies," which are drawn from the state's Common Core standards. For the 11th grade, that means students should be able to interpret the literature they read, and craft arguments using the text as evidence. Wellington uses a mix of student-led discussions, small group work, writing assignments and the occasional traditional test to measure the progress of the class.

"I'm giving them a point of focus but I'm not telling them what to think," Wellington said. "My role is to make sure they are following through with a thought or an idea and not just jumping around. Once they hit on something they have to go deeper-and find support for their position from the text."

The students keep track of how often each of them contributes to the conversation, setting goals both for themselves and for the class overall. For the most part, Wellington remains on the sidelines, although she occasionally stops the conversation for an in-class writing assignment to give quieter students an extra moment to collect their thoughts and consider what they want to say.

"When I have really strong student dominating the discussions, I'll tell them privately to hang back a little," Wellington said. "They all get feedback from me every time, after every discussion. That's hard data for them, and they love it."

There have been unexpected developments: When Wellington used a traditional multiple choice test to measure students' grasp of the content at the end of a subject unit, many of them scored poorly on some of the basic facts of Thoreau's biography. But their written responses to the essay portion of the test, asking them to explain and interpret transcendentalism, were a different kind of surprise. "They blew me out of the water," Wellington said. "Their understanding was clearly deeper than just those facts."

In an age when Google's search engine is as close as a cell phone, "I would question whether a student knowing the year Thoreau died is really essential," said Robert Rothman, a senior fellow at the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington, D.C.-based organization focused on high school transformation. "If students didn't know that he lived in the 19th century, that might be problem. If you're going to talk about transcendentalism you need to know facts about it, and about the people who espoused it, to provide evidence for your conclusions."

There are other education theorists who take this argument even further, insisting that there's little need for much of the rote learning that takes place in public schools. However, "there's a danger of going from one extreme to another," Rothman said. "Just testing students on basic facts doesn't help students develop those deeper understanding and learning. And just having them show they can communicate and write longer essays without some basis in knowledge isn't going to help them, either."

Like many of the nation's public schools, both large and small, Pittsfield must contend with a high-need student population and a post-recession struggle for adequate funding. Until recently, those challenges were exacerbated by a culture of low expectations for students, say Pittsfield teachers. In 2013, Pittsfield's 11th graders had a proficiency rate of 61 percent for reading on the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) exam; the statewide average for reading was 77 percent. In math, Pittsfield's proficiency rate of 36 percent was the same as the state average, but that's almost double the 19 percent that the school reported for the 2008-09 school year. Until 2011, Pittsfield had been on upward trend for several years, but during the past two school years, scores have fallen.

The district has also been challenged by system-wide instability. Pittsfield has a higher-than-average number of residential rental properties, which means it has more student turnover than many of the state's other small towns, said Superintendent Freeman, who took the helm in 2008 after nine years as one of the district's principals. Teacher turnover has also been high: Since 2011, about 60 percent of the teachers and administrators at the middle-high school have been replaced, in part because some staff members rejected the shift to student-centered learning. Freeman said the school has also taken a more aggressive approach to evaluating the performance and potential of non-tenured teachers.
"To let go of the idea that I have to be center stage all the time has been incredibly freeing. I feel like I'm a better teacher."
Test scores aside, Pittsfield has improved in key areas since it launched its student-led curriculum. According to the National Student Clearinghouse, Pittsfield's dropout rate in 2013 was 2.3 percent, down from 3.6 percent in 2010. During the same three-year period, the graduation rate climbed to 80 percent from 75 percent. And the college-going rate jumped to 60 percent from 47 percent.

Laureen Avery of UCLA's Center X also points out that the school is no longer in the bottom 5 percent of the state's high schools. Avery is the lead evaluator of the school's Investing in Innovation (i3) grant, a $5 million federal investment it shares with a network of 12 other New England campuses; the Nellie Mae Education Foundation and the Rural School and Community Trust have each contributed an additional $500,000 to the group of schools, and Nellie Mae, located in Quincy, Mass., has awarded a separate $2 million grant to Pittsfield specifically to put student-centered learning into place.

"I've never seen any school-big or little-pay such close attention to student data," Avery said. "They have a really well-developed way of tracking progress. Yes, Pittsfield is a unique, small school. But they're succeeding with processes that could be transferrable to another campus."

Paul Leather, New Hampshire's deputy education commissioner, emphasizes that a student-led program like Pittsfield's could not have worked without strong leaders, supported teachers, and an engaged community. "You can have the best ideas in the world," Leather said. "But ultimately, it all comes down to implementation."

To that end, Freeman has worked hard to carve out time for professional development. He has also eliminated the principal position and instead installed two deans at the helm: one for curriculum and instruction and one for building management. That clear delineation of duties means the first dean can focus on supporting classroom teachers while the second deals with the day-to-day tasks involved in running the school.

For Jenny Wellington, who has spent 12 years teaching-six in New York City public schools, two years at the University of New Hampshire, and four at Pittsfield-it's still a daily challenge to manage everything student-centered learning requires. The academic, social and emotional needs of her Pittsfield students are not dissimilar to those of her former pupils in the Bronx, Wellington said.

But she says the changes at Pittsfield have made it easier for her to respond to those challenges. She regularly visits her colleagues' classrooms, gleaning ideas about how to get students to steer their own learning and looking for opportunities for joint projects. This fall, for example, biology students will be expected to write a persuasive essay about the use of human stem cells in research-an essay that will also be evaluated by their English teacher.

"I've learned to step back more and let the students lead," Wellington said. "To let go of the idea that I have to be center stage all the time has been incredibly freeing. I feel like I'm a better teacher."
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet affiliated with Teachers College, Columbia University.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When a New Hampshire district found itself struggling with low test scores and high turnover, it made a radical decision: Flip the traditional model and let kids take over the classrooms.