Good News - We're Americans!

"The biggest force behind falling American rankings is not that the United States is doing things much worse but that other countries have caught up and are doing better. The U.S. system of education and training is inadequate in the new global environment.”  By Fareed Zakaria, Published: May 1, 2014

Words matters!

Context matters!

Rather than tear down American education and attack those who daily work to provide students across this nation the highest quality education that each community expects and requires, Zakaria strategically fires across the bow of policy makers and educators alike with the real challenge is that we as a nation have been complacent, distracted, or possibly deceived into accepting as well as approving policy, regulations, and law that has resulted in American public education no longer being the envy of the world let alone preparing at least two generations of American students with the skills, knowledge, and experience for the present and future global environment.

Are we surprized?  We should be!

We trusted elected officials to create policy, fund adequately, and provide leadership to ensure that American education was in all ways the standard bearer for the world.    

As we have learned, they didn't.  In fact, though argumentative to some, the direction to narrowly define the quality of education by a single metric set in motion a mindset of chasing a test score rather than developing the habits and discipline of learning that yield critical thinking, real world problem solving, collaboration, communication, perseverance, creativity, and more.

The damage is done.  

We have graduated not only from high school but from college students that only know education as something less than what it should be, could be, and would be if we were focused on what is right, good, and true for our nation, economy, society, security, and the obvious, each learner.

Though too late for many, it is not too late to get our proverbial "act together".  I have and will continue not to move away from the shameless reality that we have not eradicated illiteracy in our nation.  From a pure economic perspective, it is just too expensive to remediate failed learning rather than aggressively prevent intervention and remediation the first time.

As objections abound for what I just stated, let me just point out that we must change what we know and think to change what we do.  An aggressive prevention model requires suspending many of the practices, policies, and programs that, in part, are factors that work against universal literacy in our nation.

The questions that remain are all about courage, conviction, and character.  The damage to creativity, imagination, innovation, and love for learning caused by narrowly defined accountability in conjunction with our inability to focus on eradicating illiteracy has contributed to American education being surpassed by other nations.

There is good news - we are Americans!  The only barriers we face are self-imposed.