For almost two years much time, energy and emotion have been spent on the school consolidation proposal at the expense of thinking about improving what is actually happening in the schools. The emphasis has been on economics – how to save money through increasing the size of school districts and reducing the number of schools. Between attempting to enact the new law and meeting the demands of No Child Left Behind, the real victims are the teachers, students and communities. There is increasing evidence that while the focus is on money and efficiency, we are losing good teachers and students.

Nationally, close to 7,000 students are dropping out of school every day – more than a million students a year. In Maine, the new method of determining high school dropout rates has more accurately shown the number of dropouts is now double what was previously thought. Last year, 3,337 students dropped out. Rather than 84 percent of students graduating, it is now 74 percent. What is equally significant is the amount of money spent on remedial courses to have high school graduates able to do college work. If a manufacturer had close to 25 percent of its products not marketable because of poor quality, they would be out of business.

Why such a large percentage of students are not graduating and why they are not adequately prepared for college needs much more attention than it is getting. Consolidation may or may not save money – that is another question, but more important, will it improve the quality of education?

There is ample evidence that the single most important factor for success in school and for preventing dropouts is teacher availability. As schools get larger, teachers will have less time to meet with students on a personal basis to offer support and encouragement. Students need to feel someone in the school cares about them. Schools may become more economical and efficient, but at what cost?

Here we are approaching the end of the first decade of the 21st century and our approach to education is still an industrial age model. Even with Maine’s computers for every middle school student, the approach to education is still out of sync with what is being expected in the 21st century workplace. Why is this?

NCLB legislation has stifled creativity and is largely responsible for deadening education and driving good teachers out of the profession. More and more students find school irrelevant to their lives. Schools have become holding tanks – tanks that now are leaking more and more students each year.

Even if Maine decided to go in the direction of smaller schools and smaller classes, a more significant factor is how students are being taught. Creating learning environments and approaches that are more compatible with the way real learning takes place is essential. It’s not money that is lacking so much as a philosophy of education and methods of teaching that are not working.

Around the country new approaches to education are being implemented. The Met Big Picture Schools in Providence, where students are spending most of their day working as interns and apprentices, are being replicated nationally. The Hi-Tech schools in California, where students work on projects they have designed, are growing in number. The Project Based Learning Schools created by Edvisions are growing all over the country. Democratic schools that involve students in all aspects of running the school and determining their goals are also growing.

All of these schools have one thing in common – they are giving students the opportunity to pursue educational experiences that are relevant to the students’ interests. Learning is more student-directed than teacher-directed. The role of the teacher has changed to facilitator rather than “talking head.”

The structure of these schools eliminates the 43-minute period and allows students to work collaboratively on projects that engage the students physically and emotionally rather than having them be passive recipients of information which they then reproduce on a test. It is much more experiential. Problem-based learning, for instance, has students attempt to solve real problems that concern them – something that affects their community: an environmental, social, health or economic problem. Solving the problem involves thinking about the root causes of the problem and coming up with strategies of how to approach the problem. Students become researchers – gathering data, analyzing, synthesizing and then communicating the results of their efforts to the public. This approach is more compatible with the 21st century workplace and usually involves using all of the disciplines, including critical and creative thinking.

The “new economists” or “new capitalists” include our natural resources in their economic formulas. The polluting of a river or air, the loss of topsoil – billions of acres – is the equivalent of losing money or capital in the current economic view. Unless, we see our children as our greatest natural resource to be cultivated and cared for, the depletion of this resource through dropping out and unable to reach their potential will continue the downward spiral of our overall economy.

Consolidation may save money, but will it save students? That’s the question.

Arnold Greenberg is co-founder and former director of Liberty School, a democratic learning community in Blue Hill.