President Obama’s Resolution for Education
Hello all and welcome to the first post of the new year. As such, I thought it appropriate to discuss a resolution of sorts that I hope soon to be President Obama would adopt in regards to our Nation’s schools. With so much focus on the yet to be revised No Child Left Behind legislation in education circles, I thought it time to take a fresh look at this federal mandate. As most education writers and wonks will tell you, the accountability facet of NCLB is here to stay. This largely is a good thing. But it’s not enough.
As educators I believe it is time to be more fully accountable. I think it is time that we are measured not only on the academic results that our students achieve, but on the results of our social interventions as well. Education has become a data driven, numbers crunching storage house of information. Some of this information truly is helpful to the cause, some of it is also meaningless in the larger scope of our students’ lives. If you have to change the whole system of education to make a federal mandate look successful, is it really successful? Of course not. Now is the time to do something about it.
My hope is that the revised version of No Child Left Behind carries with it some language that describes schools as what they have truly become, full service community outreach systems. Let’s face it: the field of education is not immune to downturns. As NCLB was being introduced and ingrained in our consciousness, our society was also facing it s own dilemmas. And all of these dilemmas have pushed the community school to the forefront in the battle to provide our children with what they need. This is nothing new. Schools have long been providing meals to children who otherwise would go hungry. Schools have been making connections for services that would otherwise go untapped. Schools, sadly, have been providing guardianship where otherwise it would be absent. Now all that’s left is for the future administration is the recognition of this and the provision of funds and leadership to make it a smoother and more efficient process. I say if you want to hold educators accountable, give us what we need to get the job done and make us truly accountable for the whole child, not just their data.
