Innovation in Education: One Student at a Time

by Michael S. Arnold

July 2005

Dennis Littky has just finished giving a conference with 95 educators from around the country. Last week a reporter from National Public Radio visited him; next week it’s 40 school principals from the Netherlands, then six more from Israel. The week after that, the BBC wants some of his time.

It’s not really Littky they’re interested in, but rather the high school he directs and co-founded –Rhode Island’s Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center, more commonly known as The Met. The brainchild of Littky and his colleague Elliot Washor, The Met opened in Providence in 1996.

It has since become the prototype for a network of small schools around the country led by Littky and Washor’s non-profit, The Big Picture Company, aided by the generosity of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

“We knew it would turn out well,” Littky, 60, says of the unique approach he has put into practice at the Met. “Did we know it would be this popular? I don’t know.”

The Met operates in six separate buildings in Providence, each with around 100 students and its own principal. Everything about the operation reflects innovation.

For starters, there are no required classes, no tests and no grades. Yes, you read that correctly.

The main idea is that traditional methods of education and evaluation fail to meet the needs of individual students, leading to low motivation, poor grades and high drop-out rates.

The Met, instead, takes a “one-student-at-a-time” approach that seeks to capitalize on each student’s strengths, interests and learning style.

Each student works with a teacher – known at The Met as an “advisor” – to put together an individualized curriculum depending on his or her interests. There’s little in the way of standard coursework; students devise independent projects and their progress is closely monitored throughout the semester by their advisors, peers, parents and internship mentors.

Each advisor works with about 15 students, staying with the same group throughout the four years of high school. While that means faculty members don’t specialize in particular areas, it does foster a tie between teacher and student that is extraordinary for a public high school, and that is an integral part of The Met’s educational philosophy.

A typical day at The Met goes something like this:

• The day begins relatively late, at 9 a.m., with a half-hour “pick-me-up” assembly for the entire school. Students and staff make presentations and announcements to the crowd or bring in community members to talk about their work or lead activities.
  
• Students then break up into their advisory groups for a discussion that lasts until about 10:15. They might discuss virtually anything, from Shakespeare to current events.
  
• From 10:15 to 12 students work on their independent projects. That means that each student in the classroom is doing something different – one may be writing poetry, another may be researching AIDS, a third may be learning about the Vietnam War.
  
• After a brief lunch break, students have a half-hour of silent reading time, followed, from 1-2:30, by more time on their independent projects. The advisor circulates through the classroom, talking to each student about his or her progress.
  
• At 2:15 the advisory group comes together again to review the day and comment on what each student has done.

That, at least, is what they do Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, students fan out throughout the Providence area for internships in their areas of interest, in settings ranging from hospitals to graphics design studios. The advisor visits four students on their internships each day, checking on their progress and talking to the mentors they’re working with to ensure students are focusing on particular areas they need to strengthen.

On the internships, students develop rigorous real-world projects related to their interests and passions, which they further develop back at school. Projects range from developing an educational DVD explaining the high asthma rate among Latinos to designing and building a classic wooden boat with an experienced boat-builder.

The emphasis at The Met is on building on students’ individual interests and fostering their curiosity, research and communication skills. Each student must give a one-hour presentation each quarter in front of peers, faculty and parents, and all are required to write a 75-page autobiography and complete a Senior Thesis project to graduate. Instead of grades, they receive detailed narrative assessments from their advisors.

Conspicuously absent is the standard curriculum that most students must take – algebra, civics, chemistry and the like – which in most high schools is considered a base of knowledge students will need in college, if not throughout their lives.

But that’s precisely the beauty of The Met, Littky insists.

“Colleges don’t expect the kids to come in knowing all this biology, for example,” Littky says. “What they’re saying is that they prefer kids who love science, who know how to get information and who know how to solve problems. So we put less of an emphasis on the traditional bodies of knowledge.”

In a sense, it’s a twist on the idea of a liberal arts college – that skills are more important than content, or that school should teach a student how to think, not necessarily what to think.

The results speak for themselves. The Met’s attendance rate and graduation rate both hover near 94 percent – among the best in the state – evidence of a highly motivated and engaged student body. The Met also boasts a 100 percent college acceptance rate, including to top-rated schools such as BrownUniversity and the University of Chicago. Many Met students become the first in their families to go to college.

That’s not bad for a school whose student body is generally poor – 65 percent qualify for federal meal subsidies – and is heavily weighted toward minorities, with 42 percent of the student body Hispanic and 31 percent African-American. Three-quarters of the Met’s 600 students come from Providence, the rest from other parts of Rhode Island.

“Our system is never going to be for everybody,” Littky acknowledges, “but when people start seeing how our students do and seeing that we have a 5 percent dropout rate and not a 47 percent dropout rate… you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that it’s working.”

You don’t necessarily have to be a computer visionary, either, but the Met did catch the eye of the philanthropy established by Microsoft’s founder. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave Littky’s Big Picture Company an initial $4 million grant to apply his educational principles by starting 12 schools around the country, followed by another $9.8 million to expand to 54 schools. So far, 24 are up and running based on The Met model but adapted to the guidelines and regulations of each state.

That’s probably far beyond Littky’s wildest dreams when he and Washor sat down a decade ago to plan an educational experiment.

“We kind of closed our eyes and said, ‘Here’s a chance to start from scratch. Rather than trying to tweak around the edges, let’s figure out what’s best for kids, what’s the best environment that can help kids learn,” he says.

The innovations they’ve pioneered in Rhode Island already are affecting the lives of thousands of students across America.

Michael Arnold is freelance writer based in New York City.

Retreived July 31, 2005 from http://www.riedc.com/riedc/blue_sky/32/400/