The scenes from the last day of school in my community:

At one elementary the buses lined up and were loaded with happy, laughing kids, from pre-school to fifth grade, carrying their towels and lunches for a day at the swimming pool. The line of buses was followed by a parade of cars carrying parents, siblings, and relatives—all part of the end of the year "pool day."

Another bus, this one loaded with eighth graders, headed for West Virginia and a day of white water rafting—another annual event that includes parents and is led by a beloved retired teacher.

The high school kids spent most of the day meeting with friends, collecting books for summer reading, taking pictures, and conferring with teachers about final projects and assignments. Members of the junior class were talking in the commons area, still somewhat stunned that when they walked back in next fall it would be for their final year of school.

For some this litany of events might be seen as a waste of time. Nothing new was learned in terms of the state curricular objectives, nobody worked to close an achievement gap, there was no tutoring for the state tests. It was, in this sense, a lost day among the already too few that our kids spend in school.

Maybe not.

In the rush to boil everything we do in schools down to a series of test scores, many of the so-called education governors, legislators, policy makers, and think tank thinkers have forgotten one of the most important missions of the public schools—to help shape our abilities to live in a democratic community. We tax ourselves and mandate that children go to school because so that, as a society, we can teach the young the values that drive a democratic society—trust, cooperation and collaboration, tolerance, public good, engagement. None are measured on a test, but all are on display in our best public schools.

They are on display not just in the curriculum or in structures such as student government or planned community service. We also see them in the spaces the schools create to engage the entire community in simply living together.

I am not going to say that the pool party, rafting, and down time at our schools on that final day we specifically designed to teach democratic values. But they did spring from the impulse to create school communities where those values are practiced.

At the pool parents and teachers shared collective responsibility for the young people around them. And the older students were specifically charged with being watchful and helpful to the little ones on what was for many of them their first ever visit to a swimming pool. Rafting down the river took team work and mutual support, and many of the kids who found this task the easiest were students who found the classroom the most challenging. The fact that they were trusted to do the right thing without being monitored each minute on their final day said to the high school students that they were trusted to be adults—to take responsibility.

Each of these only worked because of all that had gone on during the school year outside of the officially sanctioned curriculum. That young people had an ethic of caring and collaboration came from classroom structures designed to engage students in learning together rather than alone. The ability of different students to take leadership in a challenging situation came from all students being taught what it means to be both a follower and a leader through the leadership opportunities in school governance. Using freedom as an opportunity to cement friendships and plan with teachers was a result of school structures that demonstrate to students that they are trusted.

The last day of school in my community was not a day that any of us will point back to when we try and figure out why our test scores went up. But it will be a day we remember when these very same children we are teaching join us as our neighbors and collaborators in the human experiment we call democracy.