Amidst the national obsession with raising test scores, Larry Rosenstock offers a simple suggestion: "Have kids doing work that's important to them instead of this antiquated notion of content."
Rosenstock is one of the co-founders of High Tech High, a group of charter schools that's lauded as a model example of how formal education can embrace inquiry-based, truly student-driven, project-based learning. For Rosenstock, the way to a student's motivation is through his heart, and through high expectations.
To educators, he says: "Catch yourself every time you're systematically mis-predicting who can and who can't do what among your children. We mis-predict among race, gender, socio-economic status, and standardized test. It's not democratic and it's not moving us forward."