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For 50 years, America has been asking for better education without a definition of what better education is.
Dr. W. Edwards Deming, as recalled by Dr. Lee JenkinsThe Deming Institute podcast, “Dr. Deming’s Advice to Educators”, Part 1The number one problem in education
What does better K–12 education look like? Without a clear, shared definition, schools can lose their direction, and students can lose the inborn desire to learn. What begins as a community of learners coached by teachers too often becomes a tug-of-war between adults and students.
Learning That Lasts™ provides both a definition and a practical path forward: schools where competency, creativity, character and celebration grow together. These four essentials form the foundation of Actual Intelligence.
Just as the iPhone brought a music player, an internet connection and a telephone together in one device, Learning That Lasts brings these four essentials together in one coherent K–12 system. Teachers and students become a team again, building learning that lasts while keeping the joy of discovery alive.
A better school, defined.
A better school is a community of learners where
Choose a part of the definition to see where it comes to life.
Competency
Creativity
Character
Celebration
And behind every room, the educator who built it: 12 The Curator’s Study
Ninety-five percent of kindergartners love school. By grade nine, 37 percent do.
| Grade | Love school |
|---|---|
| K | 95% |
| 1 | 90% |
| 2 | 82% |
| 3 | 76% |
| 4 | 74% |
| 5 | 65% |
| 6 | 55% |
| 7 | 51% |
| 8 | 48% |
| 9 | 37% |
| 10 | 39% |
| 11 | 40% |
| 12 | 45% |
The graph above has impacted my career for twenty years. What a tragedy! The good news is that Lee Jenkins’ message has much to do with a solution to the problem.
Ask yourself
- Did you still have your kindergarten love of learning when you were a senior in high school?
- If not, at what grade did you lose it, and do you remember why?
- If you did, what kept it alive?
The biggest problem in education is that the desire to learn every child brings to kindergarten is gradually lost. Schools have many assets, but the most valuable is that inborn desire to learn. It must be protected.
From wonderlust to wonderlost. From resilience to defiance. From mastery to disastery.
Dr. Lee Jenkins“It’s Eerie — But We Can Predict the Future of Education”, Education Today, 2025Look for the constraint
Dan Heath’s book Reset says that when a problem won’t move, something somewhere is holding progress back: find it. The constraint holding education back is the chapter-by-chapter teaching method. Here is its week.
- MondayA new chapter
- TuesdayHomework
- WednesdayHomework
- ThursdayReview
- FridayThe chapter test
- SaturdayForgetting day
It isn’t the teachers. It’s the design.
That week is still the default most of us grew up with. Repeat it all year, every year, and students are inspected about 2,000 times between kindergarten and graduation, mostly on what they will soon forget.
Architects design; contractors deliver. In education, someone long gone designed the system and today’s teachers deliver it. No matter how skilled the teaching staff, a poorly designed education system will produce the same results year after year after year.
Of the 100 or so teachers you had between kindergarten and grade twelve, how many mesmerized you with their great teaching?
“A bad system will beat a good person every time.” W. Edwards DemingFour problems inside the one.We change each of them.
With Learning That Lasts, schools no longer have to give up what keeps the love of learning alive out of fear of low test scores. It accelerates students more than people imagine, and removes the fear of major failure at the same time.
Most students do not feel competent. Even with good grades, they know they don’t remember most of a course once it is over.
Students gain knowledge and skills they can use and remember long after a course ends. Learning That Lasts replaces the cram-and-forget cycle.
Competency
Students know there are almost no chances for their ideas to be heard. Creativity is valued only in a few elective courses.
Students’ ideas for learning essential knowledge and skills are welcomed and put into practice, in every course and at every grade level.
Creativity
Very few students are ever celebrated for learning.
Every student is recognized for personal progress and for helping the class learn. An All-Time Best for every student. No student is invisible.
Celebration
Character development is not organized consistently from kindergarten to grade twelve.
Positive traits are taught, practiced and demonstrated throughout school life, with the same expectations from kindergarten through grade 12.
Character
Show your staff the problem, and the way out of it.
A deep look into decades old education problems such as cram/forget, data used to discourage, and change without any evidence of improvement. THEN he provides solutions that are simple and profound.