WILL RICHARDSON: I think all of us basically as we grow older realize that almost all of
our learning happens through experience and very little of it actually happens in these
kinds of organized, contrived, constrained environments that many schools are like.
I think it took me a long time to become a learner because I kept going back and expecting
someone to teach me stuff.
But what I realized in the last 20 years or so, especially since the internet came around
is that this is a really powerful opportunity to continually learn and that again as I look
into the future for my kids I just totally think that they are going to succeed or fail
based on their ability to learn.
I think changes are going to come mostly from the bottom up.
I think there are huge financial considerations for those who are in charge or have power
right now and that it's going to be very difficult for them to break those stories or those narratives
in service of one that is more, that embraces learning in a more kind of natural sense.
I think you're seeing it already, right.
Mastery.org, the Mastery Transcript Consortium is an example that I give all the time about
a group of schools, about 300-400 of them now that have gotten together and just said
look, in a couple of years we're not going to send our kids out to colleges with transcripts
that have numbers on them and grades on them because frankly, we think that numbers and
grades are not a great way of assessing what kids actually can do and what they've learned.
But it's a great deal of stress and anxiety on kids to chase that number and it changes
the whole dynamic in the classroom when kids are coming in saying how do I get three more
points to get a B instead of coming in and saying I really want to learn more about this.
How can I do that.
So Mastery has basically said to colleges and admissions officers we're not going to
do this anymore and so there's strength in numbers.
Like I said 300-400 schools, and college admissions officers have said okay, we'll work with you.
We'll figure that out.
I do think the more that we can come together as K-12 educators and also on the higher ed
level, but the more that we can come together as educators and have real conversations and
ask really big questions about what the world looks like right now and what that means for
our kids moving forward so they can thrive in whatever comes at them.
I think there's opportunities for us to make real big change happen.
And I'll just say if that grading and assessment domino falls I think that will start a chain
of events that will start looking at everything that we do in the classroom.
But again, it's going to be can we change the story in people's heads.
Can we change that narrative as well that says yeah, you know what, grades really aren't
that important and they don't really measure learning and they're not really conducive
to learning.
This thing over here, this competency thing or this portfolio thing, whatever it is that
we create is much better for that.
That's going to be a very difficult task because people want numbers, people want that traditional
kind of experience and assessment experience as well.
Look, at the end of the day the only learning that really matters is the learning that you
can apply.
We do a lot of learning in schools that basically is just totally forgotten as soon as the test
is over and we all know that.
I mean we all know that.
That's been all of our experience that most of what we ""learn"" in school we don't ever
use.
It's not really relevant to our lives and we forget it.
I kind of chuckle but sadly all those stories I'm reading about parents who are trying to
help their kids with their schoolwork and just can't remember any of it.
It's just like I don't remember how to do that.
But I think that at the end of the day if kids can actually apply what they're learning
in meaningful ways and in ways that show up in the world, those are amazing assessments
and much better I think, much more effective than trying to objectively give an 83 to some
piece of work or subject that we give it.
Yeah, let's see what kids can actually do and why wouldn't we want to know what they
could do.
Why wouldn't that be much more important than trying to assess what they actually know.
If they can't apply it, it doesn't really matter.