What Happens When Students Control Their Own Education By Emily Richmond

In the article What Happens When Students Control Their Own Education by Emily Richmond that was published in October of 2014, explains a new radical education curriculum whose goal is “helping students develop their critical thinking skills while better preparing them for the real-world challenges of college and career.” Rather than doing more of the same, the entire district opted to implement a new educational approach; a student-centered curriculum where teachers function as coaches rather than lecturers and students are evaluated based on their passions and interests and where their deficits and weaknesses were addressed. Richmond includes several pieces of evidence in her article to support student based curriculum by explaining “students are shouldering more responsibility for their own learning.

Richmond goes on to explain that even though the test scores are still low the essay questions that the students answer are more in depth than before. After the students took the end of unit multiple choice test the teachers had this to say “Many of them scored poorly on some of the basic facts...but their written response to the essay portion of the test, were a different kind of surprise.” The teacher that administered the test explains “Their understanding was clearly deeper than just those facts.” Going by that, it would seem that if the school district is willing to overlook the multiple choice scores and focus on the written part the students would have a more indepth and better grasp on the subject. Which is what personalized learning has been trying to