Chee, who is also a sheep farmer, runs an elementary school 45 miles northeast of Flagstaff, Arizona. Many children travel more than two hours each way from their homes on the reservation. They are immediately thrust into a culture of “No apologies,” as part of the first Native American school of which he became a member national college readiness program. He expects each of his students to plan for a college education.
When Chee started teaching at the school, he asked his fourth-grade students where they were going to college. “They had no idea,” he said. “I’d say what profession you want to have, and they’d say, ‘What are you talking about?'”
Whose who also has significantly improved literacy rates, takes its students to visit university campuses while they are still in elementary school. They have lunch in a cafeteria at Arizona State University, where Chee is getting her Ph.D., and learn about different programs and courses they can take. They “learn the logistics of applying to college,” Chee said.
The conference gave me a chance to learn how UNESCO spends years collecting data and searching for common themes. I spoke with The arms of Antoniniwho leads Global Education Monitoring Reportwhich analyzes data used by policy makers around the world to strengthen their education systems. As the conference took place before the election, we did not consider what would happen to UNESCO’s relationship with US President-elect Donald Trump cutting ties with the group during his first term. The connection was restored under President Joe Biden; Trump has said little about it since then.
Antoninis said he hopes the report will reveal new ways to develop, recruit and support school leaders, many of whom have come to Brazil to share success stories and learn from inclusion from profiles and comparisons from more than 200 countries. Antoninis stressed the importance of reaching both the poorest and richest countries to collect data.
“An American reader must read monitoring reports to open their eyes to diversity in equality,” he told me. “You see it in your country, but not on the scale of people’s lives elsewhere and in the low quality of learning. Some are just so backward.”
It’s not always easy to read the long reports and cut through the drumbeat of bad news and the hand-wringing that often accompanies it. the latest unnerving reports on education. I rely on my fellow Proof Points columnist Jill Barshey, to help interpret the latest NAEP and PISA results, explaining trends and pointing out problems that appear to have worsened since the global pandemic. This is one of the reasons I look forward to moderating a discussion on sustainability among the leaders in world education in Hong Kong next month.
I look forward to the opportunity to meet more leaders like Chee, get behind the numbers, and learn how a school leader can change lives. Chee told me that several of his students have graduated from college in recent years. He values moments.
“Some of my former students are now teachers and they come to the classroom and visit us,” Chee said. “Or a family will come and say, ‘Hey, my son is graduating from college; my daughter graduated” and it all started here.”
This story about school leadership was written by Liz Whelan and produced by The Hechinger Reportan independent, nonprofit news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Register for Hechinger Bulletin.
