We came across a provocative article in Forbes titled How America is Breaking Public Education. We encourage you to read it and form your own opinions.

Here are some of ours.

The main premise the author puts forth is that high-quality teachers need to be paid appropriately and then supported and empowered to do the best they can to help students become as successful as possible. The author makes great points that uniformity in teaching doesn’t provide the best benefit to society, however, going outside the box is frowned upon as the only item administrators, and the public, care about are test scores.

What the author is really stating is that the problem is being improperly defined, so the solutions and paths are not going to work.

Also, without outrightly stating it, alignment to the mission of school and teaching, preparing our young people to contribute positively to society, is not occurring. In our work, we see so many disctricts and higher ed institutions want to find different ways to be better for their students and communities.

Do our schools and teachers need more of our support and encouragement? Absolutely. Do they need to be empowered to utilize their expertise and passions to reach and inspire kids? Yes, especially under the guidance of aligned processes so there can be continuity as a student proceeds from one experience to the next.

We’d appreciate your thoughts on this topic. Let’s start a dialogue.

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