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“Making Geeks Cool Could Reform Education.” That’s the title of the latest national article to oversimplify school reform. Author Daniel Roth of Wired magazine offers the seeds of a good idea, but like so many other national commentators he doesn't add much to the conversation.

Roth’s general argument does appeal to me. I was a high school nerd long before Bill Gates and Sergei Brin made nerds cool. Perhaps nerds can help unravel the anti-intellectual marketing culture that makes academic achievement seem positively un-cool.

Roth also wins points for his healthy skepticism about the power of “disruptive” technological innovation. He describes a meeting of education entrepreneurs:

The businesspeople in the room represented a world in which innovation requires disruption. But [former teacher Alex] Grodd knew their ideas would test poorly with real disrupters: kids in a classroom. "The driving force in the life of a child, starting much earlier than ...

Writing commentaries on the best use of stimulus funds has become a thriving cottage industry. Don’t fund the status quo! the general argument runs. Fund innovation instead!

I’m beginning to wonder if we should start using the word “improvement” instead of innovation. This strategy might help us counter the tendency of some innovation zealots to value novelty over quality.

Former IBM CEO Louis Gerstner offered an egregious example of that tendency late last year, when he advocated the abolition of all but the largest school districts. To him, innovation seems to mean doing something drastic and doing it now. ...

A new book review on Salon.com asks: “Why Can’t We Concentrate?” The author’s answers won’t surprise you: the internet, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, ipods and many other electronic distractions are eroding our attention spans, she writes. One could add another culprit: Standardized tests that prize short answers over extended essays or projects.

I don’t mean to knock standardized assessment, which is important for a host of reasons. But the kind of assessment on the cheap that favors easily scored multiple-choice questions over open response items hardly encourages sustained reflection. In the meantime, extended research papers and senior projects have gone the way of vinyl records--assuming they were ever that prevalent.

It won’t be easy, but we have to invest much more aggressively in far better assessments, including assessments of students’ ability to do substantive projects that require sustained attention. ...

Last week, teen filmmaker Jasmine Britton told us about the impact of her filmmaking on her life plans and academic prospects. Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, a Brooklyn-based non-profit organization, has reinforced Britton's academic skills and strengthened her motivation to go to college.

This week, we're sharing our recent conversation with Reelworks filmmaker Isaac Schrem, who expands on themes introduced by Britton. Shrem describes how his school's arts programs, together with filmmaking opportunities through Reel Works, shaped his professional aspirations.

Listen to approximately 5 minutes of highlights from our interview (or read through the transcript below):

Interview Highlights
PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: Tell me about the film you made, The Other Side of the Picture.

ISAAC: I was always interested in filmmaking, but I didn't know exactly what I wanted to with it. I went with the phrase, "Write what you know." The one thing that I knew or wanted to understand, at least, at the time, was the situation with my parents, and my father leaving us and going away to Paris. So I went with that story.

It was a very rough topic for me to tackle because I still ...