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Dennis Littky may be America's most important educator. After three decades of leading major school innovation in New York, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, Littky, along with co-founder and co-director Elliot Washor, seems to have found the holy grail of school reform in Providence, R.I. Not only have they created a radical school design--Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center, a network of six small schools across three campuses that personalizes each student's education and prepares all 700 students for collegiate and professional success--that has enough success to prove that it works, but they are successfully "scaling up" this model in communities across the United States. As of last school year, there were 26 MET schools in operation and Thayer High School in New Hampshire was the first school in the Coalition of Essential Schools while Littky was its principal.
If all of this were not enough, Littky recently wrote a book, The Big Picture: Education is Everyone's Business, (ASCD 2004). In the book, Littky, 60, reveals the MET model through the profound learning stories of the students it serves. The book is a passionate testament to learners, learning and human potential. The author's breezy style makes the powerful ideas he shares easily accessible to education stakeholders.
"I think it's a comment on the world we're in that simply by being kind and knowing the kids and greeting them is something that stands out."
Fast Company magazine recently named Littky its No. 4 Entrepreneur of the Year and the Gates Foundation has provided a nearly $10 million grant to help create 38 small, urban high schools in the next five years based on the Big Picture principles and pedagogy. Business leaders embrace Littky's educational vision without requiring him to pander to their notions of schooling.
Editor-At-Large Gary Stager spoke with Littky recently, covering his philosophy, his future plans, how he operates in this day of NCLB and liability concerns, and whether his schools offer extra-curricular activities. Here are excerpts from that conversation.
How would you describe the MET in 30 seconds?
Littky: The MET is the school that truly takes one student at a time. An incredibly respectful place, meaning not just being nice to kids but [also] in the way it respects whatever they're interested in.
The family is part of making decisions, whatever the kid is interested in, it starts from that kid. So in that sense I think it's different than any other school and we do not believe that there is one curriculum that everyone has to know. A lot of people argue about that.
And then the structures are set up with a teacher following a kid in a small group for four years so you really get to know [the student] well. And we push that all the work be real, so it's not [pretending] you're interested in writing a paper on horses. It's working with somebody around horses and finding something real that can be done. So I think it's the deep respect allowing the kid in the family to build their own curriculum, follow their own interest and passions and to do it all in a real way so it's not fake.
So how do you know they're done--prepared for college, life or jobs?
Littky: That's a great question because they're never done, done with a project or done with school, ready to move on. You know in few of the ways we are pretty traditional, I mean there are kids who come to us that are very skilled, kids who come to us that could spend eight years with us. ... Some kids do something very different their last year. ... I was just with a kid yesterday who is doing a documentary as a senior project. I almost don't consider our stuff school.
So it partly is the longer we can stay with kids, helping to support their learning and letting them grow is good. Kids ready to move on whenever they want to move on, they move on.
We don't leave our kids after they graduate. One of the main things we do that we don't even talk about that much is that I have a transition counselor. I involve the advisors after [graduation].
Last week we had an empty nest meeting with the parents of the kids who left because many of them are single parents, their best friend just left for school [college. They've] never had anybody in school. So your kid messes up. What do they say? "Come home honey."
