Initiatives and Achievements in Education Reform
Since his Stanford days as a graduate student and later as a faculty member, Allen was committed to integrating technology into teaching and learning and to extensive education reform. In Stanford, he developed the first computer based school scheduling system and microteaching, which is a teacher training practicum that has been used worldwide ever since then.
When he became the Dean of Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in 1968, Allen contended with the status quo and worked to combat institutional racism. He allowed students to create their own programs and abolished the traditional grading system. The college of education recruited non-traditional students and students of color, such as the then nationally famous comedian Bill Cosby, for their doctoral programs, Doctoral students were made voting members of the faculty and participated fully in the governance of the college of education. Allen argues that the career achievements of the doctoral programs' graduates have vindicated his radical reforms.
Allen has worked toward educational reform worldwide. In Lesotho he served as Founding Chief Technical Advisor for the National Teacher Training College (1974–76). In Botswana he served as Technical Advisor to the Molepolole College of Education (1986–89). In Greece, he served as Professor at the Kollegion Athenon (1953–54). In China, he served as Consultant to the United Nations Development Programme Project and focused on educational reform and teacher training (1991–2009). He has consulted on educational reform in more than 50 countries.
As a lifelong educational technology advocate, Allen himself served as an exemplar for the integration of technology in teaching and learning in his own instructional work. He believes "Education needs dot-com leaders desperately".
Allen proposed many new education reform initiatives in his co-authored book with Bill Cosby: American School: The 100 Billion Dollar Challenge. These initiatives range from establishing a national school reform experimentation system (NESA: the National Experimental Schools Administration) to merit pay for teachers. Allen and Cosby also proposed year-round school, 15 hour school days, strong community involvement in schools, professional discretion, professional incentives, and integration of technology.
Both Allen and Cosby view education as a fundamental aspect of national defence. They argue that we need to invest in education at similar levels to our military.
Read more about this topic: Dwight W. Allen
Famous quotes containing the words initiatives, achievements, education and/or reform:
“It is well known, that the best productions of the best human intellects, are generally regarded by those intellects as mere immature freshman exercises, wholly worthless in themselves, except as initiatives for entering the great University of God after death.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements, and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end result of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, its probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)