Creativity index for schools

Last week, EdWeek featured an item on their web site in which the author described current efforts to include Creativity Indexes in school assessment and evaluation procedures. Basically, the idea is that if there is an expectation that students will develop creativity (and a method of measuring), then schools will become environments in which creativity emerges.

That all sounds great in principle, and I am not going to discourage any efforts to promote creativity as it is (in my opinion) the single most essential habit we can promote in our children. I am concerned, however, about centralized efforts to "tell teachers" how to promote creativity.

It all reminds me of the meeting at which we were reviewing writing that has been done by students. My group was assigned the procedure pieces and it was immediately obvious that the students had followed a recipe for writing the piece-- they had followed a procedure piece for writing procedure pieces. Ostensibly, the students had written something that would have been judged "meeting the standard," however, I questioned if the students would be able to write such a piece with independence- or even recognize when such writing was necessary.

So, let's promote creativity. Let's make sure there are art and music and science and math (yup real science and math are highly creative endeavors) experiences for students throughout their careers in school. Let's make sure the experiences are truly creative, however, and not just jumping the the creativity hoops.