Extraordinary School Project

This project has changed to the Effective Education Project

The Extraordinary School Project is a research project to engineer the creation of "brick and mortar" schools that can be a model for a new school system. The goal of the Extraordinary School Project is to create a self-sustaining school that will help ordinary students achieve extraordinary results. To accomplish this the school will utilize the following:

1. The most current research in the cognitive sciences
2. Improved Memory and Learning techniques
3. The Systems And Tools Educational Model
4. Applied Academics teaching techniques such as those in the Public Pupil Pizza Project
5. The SCANS Competencies
6. A system that is as self-sustaining and self-running as possible
7. A "one school room" technique of "self-paced"/Mastery learning
8. Completely "Game based" Education
9. Instilling the philosophy that all learning should be fun, exciting, and enjoyable

Changing the School System by Being Outside the System

The American School System, and most school systems in developed nations have a self contained and maintaining cycle. Large scale ongoing actual change is very difficult to do in these systems for the same reasons it is difficult to change things in nearly any large system. True change will only occur when there is an alternative system that is so compelling and successful that the current system has no choice but to change. This is the ultimate goal of the Extraordinary School Project.

While the project is at first designed to be a competitor to the traditional school system, all ideas used are open for any school to utilize, and the ulitmate goal of the project is to be in cooperation with traditional school systems to change and improve those systems.

Developing the Extraordinary School Project in the Developing World

Less developed countries have a deep need for improving the standard of living of the majority of residents. Further, due to a lack of existing infrastructure, in some ways, it is easier to build new infrastructure and have new ideas develop. Further, many of the startup costs in most developing countries are generally far less than those in more developed nations. (Although infrastructure costs, such as electricity, and telecommunications/Internet may be greater.)Extraordinary schools in these less developed areas will bemore targetted and focused than in more developed areas.

By building successful systems in less developed nations, other countries will have more of an incentive to "keep up", and copy the successful system. Also, by building success in less developed nations, it will prove the point that the more developed nations are only not able to do these tasks due to a lack of thinking, not a lack of resources.

• Extraordinary_School_Project/Developing_World
• Extraordinary School Project/Northern Computer Center, Ghana

Foundation Beliefs, Paradigms, Postulates, etc

1. Every student can succeed. But how, where, when and what success means will vary per student.
2. Learning is meant to be fun, interesting, exciting, and useful.
3. Students should learn the most accurate information available, and have accurate tools to be able to judge accuracy for themselves. All information should be provable. (This needs to be thought about, because often accuracy needs to improve over education, for example Newtonian physics is easier to learn, and accurate enough before Einsteinian physics is learned.)

Standing on the Shoulder of Giants

While often discouraged, the belief that "Reinventing the wheel" is a actually useful exercise to truly understand "the wheel". This is part of the answer to "How should we learn?".

But to answer the question "What should we learn?" we are wisest to look at what others have learned and created before us. Newton summed up the concept in his quote "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." [Insert Footnote about original intent being different]

Extraordinary Educators

The following educators have demonstrated that education can occur at advanced levels in all human beings. Their methodologies, attitudes, philosophies, etc are worth studying to determine the core of what has made them a success, and see if that can be duplicated in the Extraordinary School Project

• w: Marva Collins
• w: Jaime Escalante
• w: W. Edwards Deming