Lots going on at Fayetteville Public Schools

Administrators at Fayetteville Public Schools are finding themselves pretty busy this week.

Tonight, Tony Wagner, Co-Director of the Change Leadership Group (CLG) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education will give a keynote at the Town Center on his “Global Achievement Gap.”

Wagner is an education expert who discovered a disconnect between what potential employers are looking for in young people today and what our public schools are teaching young people.

Basically, someone finally figured out that memorizing facts in preparation for standardized multiple choice tests isn’t exactly preparing anyone for the real world.

Wagner’s findings are being used to develop FPS’s 21c Project, program designed to a create a 21st Century learning system that better addresses the gap between how students are educated and the skills they will actually need in their careers. The keynote begins at 6:30 at the Fayetteville Town Center.

Also today, the school board narrowed the candidates for a new superintendent from six to a 2. The new Superintendent will be either Brian Binggeli of Farifax, VA, or Vicki Thomas of Pasadena, TX.

Tomorrow, New Orleans architecture & planning firm The Concordia Group will lead a community design charrette, “a participatory design process structured around community engagement and building a design consensus.” In other words, FPS is looking for community input on the design of the building for Fayetteville High School. Awesome.

The full schedule for the community design charrette can be found here.

That’s a lot of important stuff going on in one week at FPS. Have any of you attended any of the community read sessions on the Global Achievement Gap?