Would you be ok to have your child interviewed to be admitted to Kindergarten?

I know  of parents who have prepped their children for that face-to-face admission evaluation process widely used today by Charter schools. Hard to argue with this if we really want a revolution in education.

So, what if students are required to qualify to be admitted to school? Many schools resort to a lottery system, since there are a few hundred openings but a few thousand applications! But in addition to this, there’s the student interview. It’s a bit like applying for a job. One Pennsylvania charter school, Tacony Academy, has this requirement:

“each student must complete an Independent Research Presentation and present the results to a panel of teachers and administrators.

 The Independent Research Presentation should be science related and either follows Scientific Method, the Question-Answer model, or the Problem-Solution model.”

This kind of motivation tells a school how to better customize a program to the student.

Speaking of which, Ken Robinson makes a great observation as to why education should not be served like fast food.