I’ve been fortunate in my adult life to develop opinions which are well-reasoned, insightful and practical. The issue with everyone else is that very few people have this special gift. It is reserved for a select group, of which I am a member. And if I want your opinion, I will give it to you.
Whew! Got that out of my system. It took a lot of work to put that in writing; now that I’m re-reading it––it is amazing in its accuracy. Or it could just be that I’m simply a victim of public education, but that would be too rationale.
In my professional life, I get to visit lots of schools and see all kinds of classroom activity. Most schools are populated with all kinds of good people: principals, teachers, volunteers and more. But it is also rare that educational leadership wants to challenge the status quo to boost learning beyond the norm. In too many schools, having a failure rate, er, I mean “not meeting proficiency” of…say…30% or 40% in a subject or grade… is seen as part of the package. No doubt, there’s plenty of blame to sling around: bad measurement systems, lousy technology, outdated tests, under fed students, poor legislation…well, you get the idea. It becomes difficult to find a gutsy leader who stands-up to this—someone who is fed-up with doing the same-old, same-old. Why is that? What about trying something a bit fresher, newer and proven-to-work? As I gaze across the education landscape, it seems to me there are simply too many followers––and they look much like a group of people trying to make it through another day. Maybe I’ve just defined the achievement of mediocrity…