I Fix Cheney’s Problem

In Cheney there’s a big debate going on about whether they should close the Robert Reid Lab School, located on the EWU campus but part of the Cheney School District (see the Cheney Free Press here, the Spokesman Review here). The CO2 levels in the rooms are too high, kids are complaining, and EWU would rather remodel other buildings (hey, Senior and Martin Halls) than put the scratch into the lab school.

I think that the problem here is one of small-scale thinking. Eastern is getting too caught up in the details and the dollars, focusing on the pixels instead of the picture. Why think small? When you have the history you do and the cache that you do, why not go for the gusto?

Hence, the solution: Eastern should build a private school on their campus.

Consider what they could do:

1) Build a state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line school. Wired and wireless, with a quality science lab, Smart Boards, and all that we dream of when we plan buildings. A building that could be both an exceptional laboratory for pre-service teachers, and a showcase for any district thinking of building a new school.

2) Hire the best teachers at the best wages. The Chronicle of Higher Education says that the average starting salary for a professor is $90,000; imagine the response you could get if that was the number in your job posting. Imagine staffing the lab school with the very best classroom teachers that the region has to offer. Imagine the difference that could make for future generations of teachers, having the best of the best right there on campus to model and talk about the craft.

3) Get a superior school leader, someone who is an ambassador for education. Give that person a salary commensurate with that of any superintendent. Give them as close to carte blanche as possible to run the school as they see fit, as long as the results show it’s working. Push them to publish in the various academic journals this state has. Be out there and be visible in a way that lets everyone know that being principal of The Lab School is an important job.

4) Run a model program. With RTI and Pyramids of Interventions being all the rage, consider the remedial programs that you could put in place. Give pre-service teachers the chance to work with programs like Direct Instruction, Read Naturally, and Read 180 before they get into the classroom. Have grad students in the math department develop targeted interventions for kids who struggle with fact fluency. Have your 4th and 5th graders from the school walk over to the science building and get meaningful demonstrations on the principles tested in the WASL in a way that just isn’t possible in the classroom.

But even beyond that, imagine what you could do with gifted students when you have the resources of an entire university at your fingertips. The potential to run a program that would accelerate those kids at the pace they deserve by matching them up with college students and exposing them to the very best that science and math has to offer.

5) Be the showcase that you’re meant to be. At the new school there should be a group coming through every day to study your methods. Pre-service teachers should be watching from the crow’s nest, then from the classroom, then practicing the craft in a controlled manner. Your teachers should be going to conferences and presenting, in addition to talking to the kids at the college.

The old adage about the Chinese symbol for crisis being the same as the one for opportunity is a load of crap. That said, Eastern has a real opportunity here to not just remodel the lab school, but to reinvent it entirely and build a beacon of education for the new millennium. I’d challenge EWU President Blah Blah Rodriguez to think big, shoot the moon, and try for something on a grand scale. The payoff for education in Washington State would be worth the investment.

Go big, EWU. Go big.