Education Week - February 19, 2020 - 38

LESSONS

From a
Leader
Be courageous
and fearless
Great ideas are not always
easy to implement. You
might get resistance
because sometimes fear
of change gets in the way.
Be courageous in your
thinking, collaborate and
communicate with others
to bring them closer to the
reason and thinking behind
the innovation.

Inspire innovative
thinking
Being innovative and
creating new ideas are hard.
Develop a safe space and
opportunities to inspire
innovative thinking. Cultivate
and nurture creativity, and
encourage thoughtful, and
intentional practices.

Learning is
paramount
Our schools need to cultivate
love of learning. Learning
happens in many places
outside of school buildings.
Make sure to foster those
opportunities for our
youngest citizens.

on a student-tracking system. Any student is free to
participate, or not, in the academies. And traditional
academic courses are a part of the academies' structure.
There are no GPA minimums. There's no application
students have to fill out. What they have is a green light
from the district.
"If you want to be in an academy, you can be in an
academy. It's really based on student interest," Camhi
said, stressing that some students simply don't have
well-developed interests yet but might want to try
something new. "Why would you keep them out of the
courses that might motivate them to do well?"
This philosophy goes back to Camhi's earliest
experiences about what tests can and cannot do and the
double-edged nature of tests: They represent prominent
feedback students get about their performance, but that
feedback rarely helps them develop understanding and
interests.
"How many other kids are there out there that can
thrive and be exceptional if we give them other ways
of engaging in learning and assessing that learning?"
Camhi said. "All too often, schools have programs, and
you fit the students inside the programs that you have.
When you get to high school, the world should explode
in front of you. The opportunities should just abound."
Camhi wasn't just implementing her own vision
for how to engage students. She was responding to
the desire of Baldwin's community on the outskirts
of New York City. Roughly 77 percent of the district's
students are black or Hispanic. The largely middleclass community, she said, celebrates its diversity
and expects its children will have experiences and
opportunities that outpace what adults had a generation
before.
One tangible result of this approach? In the class of
2019, 94 percent of students matriculated to colleges
and universities. Lower down in grades 3-8, Baldwin's
black and Hispanic students exceed their peers on the
state exams by notable margins; black students, for
example, beat the New York state average from their
peers by 13 points in English/language arts exams and
by 19 percentage points in math.
"We need to live in a current system, and it needs
to be excellent. But we need to be building our school
system for the future," she said. "Do we need to spend
all of our time inside the school building?"

Camhi was well into her professional education
career before she realized others approached tests and
school the same way she did. In fact, it took another
educator-in her case a graduate school professor-for
her to grasp the significance of her mindset.
"He was the first person to ever tell me that I was
smart. It is certainly not how I profiled myself," Camhi
said. "He made me realize that the way that I think and
the way that I learn is just not the mainstream of the way
schools teach and the way we assess a student's ability."
Baldwin's work to connect students with career
experiences goes back roughly two decades. Indeed,
Camhi says she didn't take over the Baldwin district
with a "grand scheme" already in mind and ready to

38 | EdWeek Leaders To Learn From | February 19, 2020

bolt into place. Instead, she took the district's informal
job "shadow days"-which got students outside school
walls and into local industries-and went from there.
"We kind of backed into this. This wasn't a grand plan.
There was no strategic plan written around it," she said.
"We started something that was working and we built on
it, a little over time, and it was working, and so we built
on it even more."
The academies, six in total, are anchored at Baldwin
Senior High School but, importantly, are also made
available to students starting in the 8th grade. In
addition to the three aforementioned subject areas,
there are academies for those interested in a potential
teaching career, new media, and the STEM fields.
Each academy has three pillars. There are more
traditional academic courses, including collegelevel coursework in some cases. Then there are
internships and periods during which students can
shadow professionals like doctors during the course
of their work days. Finally, there are opportunities for
students to demonstrate their grasp of the field through
competitions and capstones. Students in the global
business academy, for example, conceive, build, and
pitch a new product.
The district has a natural advantage of being close to a
world hub for capital and corporate activity, and Camhi
has seized the opportunities to forge partnerships. The
academies' partners include private corporations like
FedEx and Northrop Grumman. Half of Baldwin Senior
High School's students are in academies, which rely on
electives to create the three-pillar experience outside
the required academic courses; Camhi expects that next
year the figure will rise to 60 percent.
Ultimately, Camhi said, the academies want to
support the idea of "students as producers." That
means demonstrating what they have learned at the
competitions and elsewhere and emerging confident
that they continue to do so as adults. "There are places
that are very happy doing what they've always done,"
said Camhi, 58. "I was lucky enough to find myself in
Baldwin, in a community that believes it's time to do
things differently."
Early in her tenure, disagreements flared up with lessthan-receptive parents, she acknowledged, as did spats
about budget proposals. But she won people over.
"You need to have a board that is supportive of the
vision. And you need to have a board that's willing to
take a chance," said Mary Jo O'Hagan, a Baldwin school
board member who's backed Camhi's work. "You don't
know if an initiative is going to be successful. And you
don't know how long it's going to take."

A 15-minute drive away from the Baldwin Union
district headquarters is Molloy College, where 9 of
10 students are in preprofessional programs, according
to the college's president, Drew Bogner. That's made
the college, where 2,200 students study nursing,
a natural partner for the district's health-sciences
academy. But there's more to it than that.
"Embedding education in the practical is very
important. And connecting the experiences that you

Education Week - February 19, 2020

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