Monthly Archives: June 2016

A Fresh Approach to Education

After 12 years as principal of Clintondale High School, Greg Green had a bad feeling: He knew his school was failing its students.

Especially the at-risk ones. Only 63% of the kids at Clintondale went on to college, and 35% didn’t even make it though high school. It was rated as one of the worst schools in Michigan.

He and his staff had tried everything they could with the school’s limited resources. Nothing worked.

But he had an out-of-the-box idea.

Green is also a coach. To get the most out of the time he had with his players, he’d been making them videos to watch at home so they could see what they were doing wrong and how they could improve.

What if academic classes operated the same way, with kids prepping in advance by watching videos online at home or in the school library, and then doing their work in school, during the day, with teachers on hand to assist?

Could that actually work?

By 2011, Clintondale had flipped all of its classes, the first U.S. school to do so.

Clintondale’s failure rate dropped from 35% to 10%. College enrollment went up from 63% to 80% in two years!

Article by Scot McKnight

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