ROLE Reversal book summary

Imagine a seventh grader asked to evaluate her production over a single grading period. She is told she must give herself a letter grade. After several minutes of consideration, she tells the teacher that she deserves an F. Sound farfetched? In a Results Only Learning Environment, this is the sort of self-evaluation that happens daily.

In a time when education reform is prevalent, bureaucrats across America believe they have the answers to improving America’s schools. The problem is that most think that high stakes testing, homework and a grade-it-and-move-on-to-the-next-unit approach are at the center of successful reform, but this is not reform at all.

Changing Education

 

Real change in education must include a complete transformation of the methods that teachers and students use for learning. This takes bold measures – a complete overhaul of a broken system. It means creating a Results Only Learning Environment that removes the emphasis from traditional worksheets, direct instruction, multiple choice tests, grades and the old style of education that most teachers use today. A results-only system makes learning a shared responsibility between teachers and students. A ROLE is student-centered and project-based. Rather than pressuring students to practice rote skills for two hours nightly, a results-only classroom provides a combination of individual and cooperative learning activities, completed in class and over extended time, with constant feedback from teachers and peers and the opportunity to change and improve any activity, in order to demonstrate learning.

Results-only learning is the type of reform that will forever change American education.


Don't miss ROLE Reversal: How Results Only Learning Will Change Education as We Know It, due in early 2013 by ASCD, the world's top educational leadership organization