To retain accreditation as a member of AIMS (Association of Independent Maryland Schools), Park is required to engage in a formal evaluation process every ten years. The process begins with a year-long Self-Study of all aspects of the school's programs and operations. An Evaluating Team, drawn primarily from AIMS schools, is appointed, reviews the Self-Study, and then spends three days on campus, observing every teacher and meeting with a range of faculty, administrators, trustees, parents and students. Following the visit, the team submits a comprehensive report to AIMS, including specific commendations and recommendations and an overall Summary.
Park completed the Self-Study in spring 2003; the team visited in fall 2003. The Evaluating Team included twenty-three members from twenty different schools. Reprinted below is the Summary from the Team Report written by Peter Branch, Head of Georgetown Day School, who chaired Park's Evaluation Team.
AIMS Evaluation of The Park School of Baltimore: Summary
Dear Faculty, Staff, Students and Parents of The Park School of Baltimore,
On behalf of the Visiting Team, I want to thank The Park School of Baltimore for your hospitality, graciousness, and welcome. As outsiders we felt instantly at home with all members of the Park community with whom we met. You made every accommodation to support our work and opened up to our many questions. You made us feel at home.
The Visiting Team was, also, unanimous in its respect for the thoughtfulness, the honesty and the depth of the Self-Study. Clearly all segments of the community felt empowered by the process and, as a result, grew in mutual and self-understanding during the intense work which you undertook. In my experience, it is one of the most open such reports I have read or worked on. It made our efforts to give you feedback much easier and, I think, more fruitful.
There are creative, caring schools. There are intellectually demanding schools. The Park School is both of these. But most importantly, the Park School is a healthy school. It is all of these things because it is peopled with faculty and staff who are talented, passionate, and dedicated professionals who keep the needs of your students at the heart of all your endeavors. The Visiting Team saw extraordinary, and I mean that in a positive way, examples of your philosophy in action. The trust you extend to your students is remarkable. In turn, they take it as a right and as a responsibility. As they advance developmentally, they come to understand the subtle relationship between those two.
Some of us from more proscriptive environments found your patience with the efforts of students to discover more about themselves and their work remarkable. It is part of the strength and challenge of progressive education. But you have every reason to be proud that your close personal relations with your students fulfill the goals of your philosophy.
The Park School finds itself at one of those transition points in a school's history. You are in the midst, and probably near the end, of a period of remarkable growth in students, staff, and facilities. The Team was impressed, even envious, of the extensive facilities which support your program, including the Arts and athletics, as well as academics. The result is to foster the imagination and energies of both faculty and students. The growth in the student body has been upward, if restrained by economic conditions as well as by the need for focused marketing. And, it should be noted, marketing is not a four-letter word. It is essential and even the most honored colleges and universities do it. The growth of faculty and staff to meet both the increased size of the student body and the pressures on independent schools in competitive and demanding environments is a third change factor which has made demands on the ethos of the School.
When you consider the inevitable stress of such changes and the pressures attendant to ongoing construction, you are to be commended for the positive atmosphere and strong morale within the community. In the period of consolidation that will follow, you will need to recognize that new rather than old patterns of behavior will develop. After a period of such change, it is only natural for some to hope that the organism will revert to its previous state, but new conditions will obtain and all members of The Park School community will need to reflect on how you will want to change in order to contribute positively within those new conditions.
In thinking about change, I would like to conclude with the presumption of speaking about Progressivism to the faculty and staff of a school that is more suffused with the philosophy of progressive education than any other school in which I have worked or visited. I saw that having begun my independent school career at the Dalton School, which, like Park, was founded as a progressive institution. Throughout your Self-Study, you make such comments as "Park's philosophy is challenging to understand and practice." I cannot deny the instructional demands of this philosophy. In The Transformation of the School, his seminal work on the history of Progressivism in American education, Larry Cremin points out that "Integrated studies, required familiarity with a fantastic range of knowledge and teaching materials; while the commitment to build upon students needs and interests demanded extraordinary feats of pedagogical ingenuity."
But the reality today is that such language and practices have been adopted by the general educational community, albeit not as fully as at Park. The Park School philosophy is no longer unique. Indeed, what it represents is the best of American educational practices, which are increasingly validated by brain research and educational documentation. It may benefit The Park School to emphasize its leadership role in education rather than its uniqueness, which may be seen by some as eccentricity.
As I have said, your classroom practices and daily relationships do reflect your philosophy. But Progressivism was a social reform movement before it was an educational reform. Indeed, the reform of education was intended as one way in which to better society. As The Park School, guided by the committed leadership of your Head of School and supported by the Board's Diversity Task force, addresses one more significant change, namely the increased diversity of the staff and the student body, you have asked in your Self-Study, "How do we welcome diverse perspectives and experiences while maintaining our commitment to the essential goals and values of the philosophy?" The honesty of that question reflects the honesty and care of the Self-Study as well as of the Park School. It is the daily challenge of change. One of our Visiting Team described Park as "a progressive school seeped in tradition." As a social reform movement, Progressivism was a response to the rise of American industrial society. The question of how it is relevant today is the question all of those who believe in its ends must ask. What of Park's practices are traditions of Park? What are examples of progressive responses to societal changes?
What changes must each of us make as teachers and administrators to confront the needs of non-traditional students to independent schools and the cultures they bring with them and upon which they build their meanings? Cremin describes the spiritual core of progressive education as exemplified by Jane Addams's statement that "We have learned to say that the good must be extended to all of society before it can be held secure by any one person or any one class; but we have not yet learned to add to that statement, that unless all men and all classes contribute to a good, we cannot even be sure that it is worth having." As a school that is committed to progressive education and diversity, you have a splendid opportunity to continue to advance social justice consistent with your philosophy. It will be difficult, but change, if not easy, is inevitable. In this essential effort, this great school can continue to be the educational leader for social reform that it has always been.
With great admiration and regard,
Peter M. Branch, Chair, Visiting Team
