© 2008 Headwaters Academy
Phone: (406) 585-9997 admissions@headwatersacademy.org Click for School Calendar Design by Living Arts Media
Phone: 406-585-9997
Fax: 406-585-9992
Headwaters Academy
418 West Garfield Street
Bozeman, Montana 59715
FROM THE STAFF
It's been a wonderful school year to date; thank you so much for being a part of our community.
Thanks, too, to the several of you who suffered through my presentation at the recent study skills workshop/stress management workshop. If you weren't there, please let me know if you'd like the handout. HWA students and parents will hopefully be as prepared as possible for a smooth finals week in late January.
Speaking of tests, there has been a huge emphasis in public schools on content-based education and testing since the inception of No Child Left Behind. Just as there were fears in the 1950's and '60's from Sputnik's success that the Russians were racing ahead of the U.S. in math and science, there are now fears that several countries, especially some in Asia, are exceeding U.S. students' test scores. After eight years of an extraordinary emphasis on test scores, American legislators are listening to American educators and realizing that testing alone is not the Holy Grail of education. While testing certainly has its importance (witness our finals week!), critical thinking and leadership skills are perhaps just as significant.
The great paradox: the United States has spent billions of dollars this decade restructuring American education around test scores while countries with the highest test scores in the world are restructuring their educational systems around the "old" American model. Take China and South Korea as examples. Their students score off the charts on standardized tests, yet both countries seriously lack in innovation. Their governments are madly trying to emulate what American schools have done "forever" in developing innovative and leadership skills in its students. Many private American high schools are currently overloaded with admissions requests from wealthy South Korean parents who desire an American education for their children, and China loses its top graduate students to American universities. Chinese high school students would also be flooding American schools if the Chinese government allowed them to come.
Dr. Yong Zhao, a Distinguished Professor at the Michigan State's College of Education, is one of those brilliant Chinese graduate students who came to the U.S. as soon as he could. Mr. Zhao is a consultant to world-wide governmental and educational agencies on six continents, and he is the author of Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization–a book that explores why the perceived weaknesses of American education are actually strengths, and just how countries with top test scores are trying to imitate American education. According to his university web site, "His current work focuses on designing 21st Century Schools in the context of globalization and the digital revolution." While in Seattle recently, I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Zhao speak. He was impressive. In case you are interested, he has a wealth of information on this web site: http://zhao.educ.msu.edu/
On a local note, Headwaters Academy teachers strive for a sensible balance of content-based knowledge, critical thinking skills, and leadership opportunities–of course!
It's been a wonderful school year to date; thank you so much for being a part of our community.
Thanks, too, to the several of you who suffered through my presentation at the recent study skills workshop/stress management workshop. If you weren't there, please let me know if you'd like the handout. HWA students and parents will hopefully be as prepared as possible for a smooth finals week in late January.
Speaking of tests, there has been a huge emphasis in public schools on content-based education and testing since the inception of No Child Left Behind. Just as there were fears in the 1950's and '60's from Sputnik's success that the Russians were racing ahead of the U.S. in math and science, there are now fears that several countries, especially some in Asia, are exceeding U.S. students' test scores. After eight years of an extraordinary emphasis on test scores, American legislators are listening to American educators and realizing that testing alone is not the Holy Grail of education. While testing certainly has its importance (witness our finals week!), critical thinking and leadership skills are perhaps just as significant.
The great paradox: the United States has spent billions of dollars this decade restructuring American education around test scores while countries with the highest test scores in the world are restructuring their educational systems around the "old" American model. Take China and South Korea as examples. Their students score off the charts on standardized tests, yet both countries seriously lack in innovation. Their governments are madly trying to emulate what American schools have done "forever" in developing innovative and leadership skills in its students. Many private American high schools are currently overloaded with admissions requests from wealthy South Korean parents who desire an American education for their children, and China loses its top graduate students to American universities. Chinese high school students would also be flooding American schools if the Chinese government allowed them to come.
Dr. Yong Zhao, a Distinguished Professor at the Michigan State's College of Education, is one of those brilliant Chinese graduate students who came to the U.S. as soon as he could. Mr. Zhao is a consultant to world-wide governmental and educational agencies on six continents, and he is the author of Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization–a book that explores why the perceived weaknesses of American education are actually strengths, and just how countries with top test scores are trying to imitate American education. According to his university web site, "His current work focuses on designing 21st Century Schools in the context of globalization and the digital revolution." While in Seattle recently, I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Zhao speak. He was impressive. In case you are interested, he has a wealth of information on this web site: http://zhao.educ.msu.edu/
On a local note, Headwaters Academy teachers strive for a sensible balance of content-based knowledge, critical thinking skills, and leadership opportunities–of course!
--Tim McWilliams, Headmaster
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