The State of Education Today (An Introduction)

I have been contemplating writing a blog series for a few months. I want to try to articulate my beliefs on the current state of education in America and offer a road map for future action in education. This simply cannot be accomplished in one post, so I will spread it out over three posts this week.  The series will end on Friday with an outline of how I believe education should proceed in the upcoming years. 

I first would like to establish some foundational principles that ground everything that I believe in education.  First, everyone in education must do what is in the best interests of the students.  That sounds like a simple, and easy, statement to make.  After all, I have yet to hear from an educator or an education reformer who claims that their policy suggestion is not in the best interest of the students. Our schools exist because of the students and we cannot forget this simple truth. Second, the vast majority of educators working today are committed and passionate about providing the best education for their students.  With that being said, all of us involved in education must also consider how different policy suggestions (or reform ideas) will affect the students and schools that we are so intimately involved in.   I want you to understand that I can only offer my opinion, but in so doing, I hope to help you understand the consequences of some of the reform ideas being bantered about in the public discourse.  I will discuss four of the bigger reform ideas dominating education circles right now, and then I will finish the series with my road map for success in education.  The four reform ideas are:

1. The Common Core Curriculum
2. Charter schools, vouchers
3. Cyber (virtual) schools
4. Standardized tests

These topics are what I know are setting the agenda in every school district in the United States today.  I believe that you will be surprised at just how fundamentally they can (and will) change the way our children our educated. Finally, I hope that you will be encouraged and inspired by vision for public education.