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The Studio 4 Manifesto
Designing Leadership and Practices for the Future of Public Education
Moving Education to Another Level |
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| The Problem | 1. The difficulty of making change in conventional schools has been well documented. Conventional schools cannot/will not change.
Schools have staff members who want change and those who do not. They become offsetting forces and engage in a tight dance called gridlock. In spite of several
billion dollars of federal and foundation grants over the past four decades in America, schools are essentially as they have been. We continue to re-create the conventional
school at the expense of a disturbingly large amount of young people, especially those in poor and/or disadvantaged communities.
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| The Research | 2. Several prestigious groups of scholarly organizations, National Academy of Sciences (2000) and American Psychological
Association (1997), have both issued documents about how learning best takes place. Schools, by and large, ignore these research findings and continue in old pathways. For example, learning
needs to be less content driven and more in context from the learners' viewpoint.
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| Changing Learners | 3. Teachers and administrators are in the paper age with students. Meanwhile business and society is moving rapidly into
the digital information/communications age. There may be evidence that students heavily into the digital age have developed different brain structures. They can multitask and think faster,
and traditional educational models have not adapted to accommodate or capitalize on this change.
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| Policy | 4. In schools, the educated class (they did well in school, by and large) wants improved schools but not radically different schools.
They don't understand radically different schools given their familiarity with conventional schooling. As policymakers, they support school improvement but resist fundamental change.
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| The Need | 5. New types of schools are necessary to produce responsible citizens, productive/enterprising workers and lifelong learners at a
high level of performance. Conventional schools give lip service to these goals but their curriculum is ineffectual in the accomplishment of these goals for most students.
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| Solutions | 6. Research and practice provide many promising leads for tomorrow's schools. Some of these leads include personal learning plans,
strong advisor programs, community-based learning, "just in time" learning, empowerment through technology, partnerships, etc.
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| Example | 7. Studio 4 has created a school that incorporates what research and practice has determined is necessary for the children of tomorrow.
High School for Recording Arts, a 501(c)(3) non-profit public charter school works collaboratively with Studio 4 to reach students at high risk of not graduating from high school by affording
them an opportunity to access a student operated, for profit record company, Another Level Records, and state of the art recording studios, true school to work experiences, world class
technology and access to educational and private industry experts as vital adjuncts to the school's staff. This public/private partnership has resulted in real accomplishments in student
achievement, increased attendance and graduation rates, and high levels of student and parent satisfaction. |
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