Learning Communities

The parents were more than a group of "boosters" - they were a team of parents who supported a team of players and a team of coaches. We had clear, common goals and consensus on the criteria for measuring success and failure.

In the classroom, however, I had a more limited opportunity to know and understand my students - usually nine months, or less if I was teaching a semester course. My academic colleagues and I usually saw each other only occasionally at a departmental or school meeting. We almost never planned together, and we never taught together.

These examples, and others, have led me to conclude that we should provide incentives to educators to be organized into instructional teams that are assigned groups of students for multiple years. These "Learning Communities" will allow our schools to accomplish many worthwhile objectives, simultaneously. Most importantly, we will begin to see, quickly and inexpensively, numerous improvements in our delivery of education in South Carolina.

Consider the following benefits:

  • Large, sometimes impersonal, campuses will be able to create "schools within schools," where teams of teachers will get to know students and their parents in ways that will facilitate better instruction and communication.
  • Each teacher team will have greater autonomy in crafting its curriculum and instruction to help ensure that every student succeeds.
  • Each parent team and teacher team will be able to seek consensus on how they will proceed on critical issues such as: measurable success benchmarks and accountability; discipline; dress codes; spirituality, within constitutional limits; and other needed enhancements like physical fitness, technology, foreign languages, and character education.
  • When teams of teachers beat the benchmarks that have been set cooperatively, they should be rewarded financially.
  • New teachers will be inducted into the profession by joining experienced teacher teams. Instead of the present high percentage of new teacher attrition (33% in the first five years), inexperienced teachers could experience greater success by learning essential professional skills, attitudes and work habits during their apprenticeship as a junior team member.


Learning Communities would bring about more innovation, competition, and choice within public education and could be a part of our overall effort to improve public education. While they are certainly potentially powerful drivers of change, these Learning Communities are no silver bullet for educational reform in South Carolina. They are but a single example of how we can begin to create substantial change and improvement within a public school system desperately in need of a comprehensive statewide plan for reform. If Learning Communities were a part of such a plan, our state could include educators, parents, business leaders, legislators and others in a meaningful and responsible effort to improve our schools, our state, our reputation, and, most importantly, our future.