Our Nation at Risk

In 1983 a report was released. A Nation at Risk,  the results of an 18 member Reagan-era investigation warning that if we as a nation didn't do something about our schools that we as a country were falling behind. This report started the narrative regarding how we as a country and how schools need to change in order for our country to succeed. During this same year, Star Wars VI, The Return of the Jedi, and The Right Stuff were in movie theaters. That was thirty years ago. And perhaps the panel was right, we did need to change.

A Nation at Risk did start the era of reform. The narrative about schools and learning changed. With reform came standards, state testing, accountability, the whole language-phonics debate, more reform, harder tests, more accountability, value-added based on standardized tests, more standards, harder standards, more accountability, college & career readiness, No Child Left Behind, AYP, more standards, more accountability, digital tests. The fly wheel of the narrative spun. In some aspects of schooling, we did learn to value key ideas: IDEA = All children have a right to a Free and Public Education regardless of disability, 504 = We need to make reasonable accommodations to support an employees ability to function in the workplace (schools are the work places for children) No Child Left Behind = we can't just educate our majority of successful kids, we need to look at our subgroups of diverse needs and educate them also, Value Added = all children have a right to learn, grow, and improve, not just the neediest.

In their essence, each of these initiatives have some benevolent purposes. As a result of these we have improved, changed, and reformed. However, the narrative hasn't changed. The flywheel about schools failing has reached desperation levels. The arguments about how we check, the level of standardized testing, and the push to have more curriculum at earlier ages has continued. Each week I receive emails: are we ready for Common Core, are we ready for PARCC. Salesman playing off the narrative that if you aren't ready, you will be marked as failures. Published for not making AYP.

Guess what, the narrative is just plain silly at this point. There is no other way to describe it. In 1991, Johnathan Kozol wrote Savage Inequalities: Children in American Schools. In it, he compares the have schools such as New Trier High School in Wilmette, Illinois, and the have nots of East Saint Louis, Illinois. Guess what, 22 years later, New Trier is still one of the best schools in the nation. Still one of the haves. Still has some of the best children in the world. A program all of us can be envious of. By the way, they also failed to make AYP. Stevenson High School, birthplace of Professional Learning Communities movement and learning by doing. They also fail to make AYP.

So what are these children, ones educated just prior to A Nation at Risk and ones educated since them doing. How has our society faltered as we have taken the baton from the Greatest Generation and handed it to the Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y. What are the products of these children of schools of ever increasing failure producing:
Inventions of the 1980s: DNA Fingerprinting, Doppler Radar, Prozac, Cell Phones
Inventions of the 1990s: World Wide Web (HTTP), DVDs, Fuel Cells, Viagra
Inventions of the 2000s: iPods, iPhones, Android, Bluetooth, iPad

Yes, these children of generations of failing schools have globalized the world and essentially made Star Trek real. Everyone has the Star Trek communicator, on TV they can create the holodeck, we all can put Uhura's ear piece on and talk to anywhere in the world, Google Glass is a version of Geordi La Forge's visor. Want to talk to the shipboard computer like Captain Picard or Commander Riker, try one of these two phrases with your smartphone: "Siri, I would like" or "Ok, Google" and Siri and Google now will get you your answer. Clearly, the children of our schools have failed. Clearly, the teachers and principals of our schools have failed. In the 47 years since Star Trek we haven't invented the Warp Drive and the Matter Transporter.

I sat with four principals on Friday, discussing our data, data-informed learning, and narrowing our learning targets. A veteran leader, one who I respect and admire, asked how is it that we go from being a "School of Excellence" one year to not making AYP the next. We worked hard, the kids aren't learning less, in fact we are doing better things than we have. This principal is right. He is telling us that we need to control the narrative. We, as classroom leaders, building leaders, district leaders, and legislative leaders need to refocus the narrative. Stop worrying about the next reform, the next standards, the next higher level of accountability. Lets find reasonable levels for growth, reasonable amounts of accountability, and reasonable levels of independence and innovative thinking.

Even though the reports indicate that our schools our failing, the only thing failing is the narrative. It is time our legislators and national reform advocates reflect on the world around them, just as Luke Skywalker asked Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda to do 30 years ago and reflect on their point of view. Perhaps, like Luke discovered within Darth Vader, we will find that there is a lot good within our schools.