What is black and white and red all over? A panda bear with a sunburn!
Is education black and white? Is it a system that is designed to be an all or nothing system? Good or bad? Black or white? Is grey, or for our purposes, “red” permissible and identifiable in the education system?
It seems that many components are designed in this “black and white” way in how the overall education system is set up. Schools in the 42 states who have adopted the Common Core State Standards must follow these standards. It is not optional and it is not left up to the discretion of the teacher or the unit that is being taught. A student passes a class or they fail it. They get an “A”, “B”, “C”, “D”, or “F” based on the way they perform in the class. In many schools, a student who achieves 89% for example, earns a “B” in the class, even though they are 1% away from an “A”. These are all examples of the black and white structure in which education is maintained.
At Innovative Education Management, we seek to allow some of the “red” in while keeping within the confines of the “black and white” law. Our desire is to offer the best possible education for all of our students, each of them individual and unique. We accomplish this in various ways.
As part of the cornerstone of how we carry this out is our individualized learning plans that are created for every student in one of our IEM schools or programs. Our teachers sit down with each student and their parents and discuss how that student best learns, what they are interested in, as well as which subjects are more challenging and which ones they need to be more challenged in. Assessments are given and curriculum is discussed. We are not limited by school adopted curriculum but instead head into what some schools may consider the “red” area and allow families to select what works best for their student from our thousands of approved curriculum vendors.
We also get involved in the legislative world of education. We continue to have memberships in charter organizations that advocate for charter schools. We look to make an impact and bring the red into this black and white world.
Ironically, IEM’s colors are black and white with red. The red represents that while we operate within the structure of the black and white world of education, we also look for opportunities to allow the “red” in – those elements that will assist us in our goal of creating lifelong learners. Thank you for partnering with us as we change public education one student at a time.
