As one who has been a school board member, education professor and lifelong advocate for expanding learning opportunities for people of all ages, I find it odd to be opposing a program called “Learn Everywhere.”
Learning should be “everywhere,” for all of us, at all times. But learning that earns high school credit is governed by standards that are painstakingly set by experts in local, state and national conversations. That’s why we have state criteria for teacher certification and why people in each N.H. high school district continuously review what should be required to earn their diploma.
I believe in the need for systemic reforms that offer more ways for diverse students to perform up to their full potential and prepare for challenging roles as citizens and workers. But for the same state officials who established rigorous standards to submit to pressure from those who advocate further weakening our public schools by allowing for-profit and religious-based enterprises to force public high schools to grant credit for unregulated activities is to abandon accountability. Home schooling and private academies are already an option, but they don’t earn you a diploma from your local public high school. Nor should they.
We have in place an Extended Learning Opportunities (ELO) option that allows for innovative and self-designed learning projects to gain high school credit, supervised by accredited educators. Let’s rather help fund more local ELO coordinators to in turn help more of our students become self-motivated learners throughout our K-12 school system, instead of further undermining our public schools to serve the libertarian agenda.
ROB FRIED
Concord
(The writer is the director of the New American Baccalaureate Project.)