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Lisa Nielsen: Students should be free to opt out of school.

The city Department of Education has adopted a laser-like focus on sending its graduates to college. But that doesn’t mean all of its employees are on board.

Lisa Nielsen, who works in the DOE’s office of educational technology, is advancing the idea that not only is college not for everyone, neither is high school. In the Community section today, Nielsen explains why she put together a guide to help teenagers figure out how to “opt out” of high school and continue learning and developing on their own.

She writes:

Despite outdated constraints involving issues like seat time, student funding, and resource allocation, we are making progress toward bringing more personalized and engaging learning opportunities to students through a handful of efforts, such as the iSchool and the Innovation Zone. But while students are doing better in a more innovative climate, ultimately we are just using updated tools to meet narrow and outdated measures on which our students, teachers, and school leaders are judged.

It is not enough to personalize learning for everyone to go down the same path — to college, without consideration of what comes next. Instead, schools need to embrace the many alternatives to the traditional college route that would better meet the needs of many learners today. What is missing at the DOE is the important work of letting students discover, define, and develop their own passions, talents, and interests and determine personalized, meaningful, and authentic measures of success.

Nielsen, who writes the blog The Innovative Educator, told me she hears frequently from teachers who say they fear they are boring students by teaching a test-driven curriculum. But when she tries to talk about the issue with other administrators at the DOE, she told me, it’s usually dismissed. (more…)

John Merrow has been collecting advice for President Obama on education. The latest additions are real audio from students, including this Texas high school senior, who says schools should focus on tests that prepare students for college, not standardized state tests:

“It would be a whole lot more useful to students if they would focus on tests like SAT’s and ACT’s, more college-oriented things, rather than an end of year test that’s not used by colleges or even hardly looked at by colleges.”

Malika Evans, an Urban Academy senior here in New York City, wants Obama to end military recruitment in high schools:

“It gets harassing, they keep calling…School is for education and education only, and students should be worried about going to college after going to school.”

At Vanguard High School in Manhattan, two students ask for better environments for gay and lesbian students:

“There is a lot of high schools that don’t approve of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and queers….In school, it should be a safe place, it should be like a second home. Nobody should be put down because of their sexuality.”

I’ve been on a few college tours with middle schools kids over the years, and what sixth graders notice isn’t that different from what one Brooklyn second grader learned on a visit to a CUNY campus:

“They have automatic toilets,” he said enthusiastically. “I like this college because of the bathrooms – and the computer classes.”

The cafeterias and gyms tend to make an impression, too.

My question is, when building college expectations among young children and teenagers, what should educators and tour guides emphasize? Facilities, food, and fun? The nuts-and-bolts of college, like what a major is and the difference between a seminar and a lecture? What they need to do to get in?

What’s right for different grade levels, and how do we help kids envision themselves on the path to college in a way that will actually get them there?