People ask me all the time, what makes a school great? The better question is, great for whom? For teachers? For students? For school committees? For taxpayers? For our nation?

Our country is rightly concerned about the quality of education. MCAS and other state-administered tests are designed to ensure that all children reach minimum standards. A focus on specific outcomes sometimes push schools to teach as if all children learn exactly the same way—but they don't.

At the same time, schools across the country are working hard to become better, stronger, more responsive—often with fewer resources. For some schools, this often means trying to do much more with less. It would be an easier task if all children had exactly the same abilities and needs—but they don't.

Learning Is Individual

The fact is that learning is never simple and learning is never the same for everyone. Learning is complicated, messy, confusing, and not as easy as it sometimes seems. Research tells us that while there are predictable milestones to human development and general patterns of learning, individual learning differences are often dramatic. Differences in interest, in enthusiasm, in personality are also dramatic. Learning, it turns out, is as individual as we are as people.

What Makes Schools Great

At Schools for Children, we are committed to helping schools respond to children as individuals—that's what we believe makes a school great. We want to help schools create room for every student to be heard, the space to listen to what each student genuinely needs to move forward, and the time and expertise to teach students in effective—and joyful—ways.

Educating children as individuals is harder and often more expensive than teaching children as if they were all the same. As schools grapple with cuts and political pressures, opportunities for learning to be complex and individualized are reduced. Our mission is to help schools preserve and enhance what it takes to be great and to create new programs that respect the individual and can be models for others.

Schools for Children can give schools time to focus on education instead of administration. We can help address chronic and expensive problems—transportation, teacher-training, social curriculum, special needs—so schools can become more responsive to all. We can manage and support new schools and create and pilot new ideas and services. And we can create models of education for other schools to learn from. At Schools for Children, we'll continue to develop learning approaches that help teachers reach kids as the individuals that they are. We'll train, we'll inspire and we'll lead.

Come join us!

Dr.Ted Wilson
Executive Director, Schools for Children