“There should be multiple pathways to university”

“New York insisted they had to pass five traditional exams. We found a better system, based on what we think students should be able to do when they graduate, whether it’s going to college, entering the job market, or being active in a career.” democracy. And we felt that the exams did not allow us to offer them that. So we devised a evaluation system that would allow us to achieve it. That system was also going to change resume and the teaching methods. It’s not that we didn’t like exams. We wanted something that better prepare for the future“. This is how the teacher sums up the philosophy of change Ann Cook, Director of the Consortium. A philosophy that is in line with the competency model that is already taught in primary school in Catalonia and that Lomloe now incorporates and extends to ESO and Baccalaureate.

What began as a pilot program in New York became official in 1998. The result? “Our students were better prepared than when they started. They were more excited to learn and the teachers more interested in staying at their school,” says Cook. The Consortium then set out to get the City University of New York (CUNY), a public network of universities with four-year degrees, will accept its students, many of them of migrant origin and without resources to pay for studies and life outside their city. In 2014, CUNY agreed to incorporate, also on a pilot basis, a group of these students “to see what would happen.” And what happened? “They started looking at the results and they saw that the kids were doing pretty well. That helped us keep the program going, and we’ve had it for a few years now. A thousand kids will have been through CUNY by now,” explains Cook.

73% of the high school graduates of the Consortium schools continue university studies. “And they are poorer, more immigrant, more Black and Latino and more disabled than the rest of the city. Our schools are not selective, they are diverse. But the assessment system creates a culture, a curriculum and a community that prepares these young people and makes them interested in going to university. And they are doing very well”, explains this professor from Chicago with satisfaction. A differentiating factor of learning in these schools is the discussions. “They are a learning vehicle. Skills and knowledge are required to lead a discussion,” says Cook.

Michelle Fine, a professor at CUNY and the person who was committed from the beginning to admit these students to the university, confirms it. “They are doing very well compared to the students who come by way of external exams because the students of the Consortium are used to write, read, work with the teacher, to pick up ‘feedback’ and review their works. They work. They produce knowledge, which gives them the intellectual muscle to navigate the university. And once in college, they persist,” he says. “When you talk to Consortium graduates in college, you see that they know how to write, how to analyze and revise. They know how to approach a problem, ask a question and work to answer it,” says Fine.

It has gone so well that CUNY has changed its admissions system. This is no longer based only on traditional exams, but on other elements, such as the set of works of these students. In the opinion of Cook and Fine, there is a long way to go here in the admissions system.

How should access to university be? “There should be some way that students can show what they know how to do. See the work they have done, what they have written or analyzed. I teach doctoral classes and what we look at is their work, the vision they have of what they want do, what their teachers say. Sometimes we interview them. So we have a lot of information about that student, their work and their wishes,” explains Fine. “There should be multiple ways. Some can gain access through exams. Nowadays, athletes, musicians and artists enter with other criteria. And for other students, they should value their workCook points out.

“Find a good teacher”

Consortium students often encounter two ‘surprises’ at university. “They’re used to having good professors and when they get to college they don’t find the professors interesting. They’re also used to writing essays and are surprised at how afraid their peers are to write,” says Fine. And that’s where Cook comes in to question that “anyone with a degree thinks he can be a teacher.” And he points out that the focus is often on primary and secondary teachers but not on university teachers. And he gives advice to university students: “Don’t sign up for classes, sign up for a teacher. Ask questions, find out which teacher is good, interesting, motivating. Find out who is good at teaching.”

They both point to key figure: teachers. “If you really do a competency evaluation, you change the culture of the school because you change the curriculum. They are no longer rote exams, of information. It is not the teacher in front of the class. It is a more participatory, more analytical, more investigative system” , summarizes Cook, to underline a difficulty: “teachers are trained so that their students pass exams. This is what happens. It is difficult. We are trying to change an entire culture of education. And there is resistance because teachers and families think of how they taught them. With exams. And they wonder ‘what happens to these kids who can’t pass an exam?’. It’s hard to get people moving. It takes a lot of work and time to re-educate teachers. One thing What’s interesting is that a lot of our college graduates go back to their colleges to teach. And they’re the best teachers because you don’t have to convince them that there’s a new, better way to learn.”

resistance to change

Regarding the difficulties in introducing change in education, Cook points out that there are still too many people with a personal experience concrete. “They think more about that than what education could be like. They don’t have an image, a different picture of what is possible.”

Another difficulty is pointed out by Fine: “In the US exams are an industry. There is a lot of pressure on legislators to keep exams to a maximum.” However, and paradoxically, there are 1,600 private, elite and basically white universities that do not use exams. “So there is a group of students invited to dream and think about big and another, subject to their exams,” says Fine. The latter is made up of poor, black, Latino and immigrant students.

The good news is that many universities are already rethinking your admissions systems because they see that exams leave vulnerable students out. “What is the purpose of higher education? Why do we have universities? Is it to build democracy, research, creativity? Or is it to exclude? I think that now, for selfish reasons (loss of students) and also for reasons of democracy, Universities want to open up a little more to diversity. There is this movement of change, but there is still fear of leaving the exams. Because there is an industry behind it and because there are people who think that without an exam you are not teaching your child, “he analyzes Fine.

Cook also points to the profile of who decides the educational policies. “They have not spent much time in a class nor have they been teachers. And they get involved in designing education policies. Many have never taught classes in their lives. In front, those who are at the classroom, those who see what works and what No. There’s a gap there.”

Two ways to teach

Related news

In the US, as now in Spain, they have also experienced the debate on whether this new way of teaching supposes lower the level. Cook dismisses it with an example. “Imagine I’m teaching photography. I can give students all the information, give them a test, and then send them out to take photos. Or I can send them out to take photos. They’ll run into problems and see that they need knowledge, and they’ll understand. The conclusion we’ve come to is that when children learn like this, they retain the information. They’ve used it and they’ve understood it. It makes sense to them from experience.”

“I think we have to ask ourselves more and more what we want children to learn and what we want them to know how to do. We want them to be able to find information and differentiate what is reliable and what is not. I think that is much more important than learning a lot of information”.