Andrew Rothstein, Ph.D.

Senior Director, Curriculum & Assessment

National Academy Foundation

It was noon on a Saturday when my son, still in high school at the time, walked into the kitchen to have breakfast. I was watching a TV show about education while my son was trying to shake off his adolescent morning grogginess.

The debate caught my son’s attention when one of the panelists stressed the importance of “raising the bar” for students. He swallowed and looked up at me. He asked, “Dad, doesn’t ‘raising the bar’ mean making school harder?”

“I think so,” I said.

He grunted and said, “That’ll never work. More kids‘ll just quit.” Then he went back to his cereal.

Raising the bar is one of those phrases educators hear or use to describe expecting more from our students. What any one person means by that phrase varies widely, however. The context my son put it into is more dull work. As a former educator, I interpreted it as expecting more creativity, professionalism, complexity, and purpose. The interpretations were miles apart. If the phase meant more hours of repetitive and dull worksheets or memorizing trivial facts, he wanted no part of it.

My son’s reaction wasn’t unusual among his friends. While there is no guarantee that anything taught to students will strike them as interesting, it’s clear that more demands and harder work is not enough to motivate reluctant students.  

His views not being uncommon among many students, it seems worth considering how to “raise the bar” in a way that makes learning more interesting and not just harder.

One approach to engaging students is teaching content in a professional context. This increases the likelihood that students will acquire valuable skills, generate relevance, and see their education as a step toward long term career options rather than just compliance with the demands of the educational system. Creating career-contextualized curriculum starts with engaging professionals about what they experience and think about.  It makes it easier to create integrated curriculum around professionally authentic project-based learning and workplace learning, embed literacy instruction into career studies, and define rigor in a way the makes learning attractive.   

 continue… http://naf.org/in-the-news/assuring-meaningful-school