GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Appearing before about 600 educators at a recent conference on progressive education, Deborah Meier threw away her prepared speech. In an inspired request, the MacArthur Genius Award winner and prominent advocate for progressive education asked attendees who started teaching in the 1960s to stand up. Then she called on educators who began their careers in the 1970s. She continued decade by decade to the present until a good part of the audience was standing.

Meier’s gesture made visible the long history — into the present — of progressive education in New York City’s schools. But it also raised the question: Where — in an era of high-stakes tests and number crunching — is progressive education?

Most progressive educators trace their roots to John Dewey, the early-twentieth-century philosopher who wrote extensively about the connection between education and democracy and proposed an educational model that was intellectual, pragmatic and applied. Over the past 25 years, the term has come to describe interdisciplinary instruction; alternative ways of gauging student learning, like performance-based assessment; project-based learning; advisory or guidance groups as part of the school day; small classes sizes; a full measure of art and music classes; and time set aside for teachers to plan and work together. For progressive educators, a shared vision of the purpose of education and how students should be taught unites all of these features.

At one point in the not-too-distant past, New York City was a center of progressive education. (more…)