Graduation is NOT the endzone!

I like sports metaphors to make points and I often use one about a quarterback throwing the ball to where the receiver is going to be, rather that where they are standing at the snap of the ball. My point is that as educators we must throw education to where our learners are going to be rather than where they are when the class bell rings.

I believe that many of us are too focused on graduation as a sort of educational end zone. We see the kids score their touchdown in their cap and gown, we clap and then we focus on getting the next team ready for graduation. The problem with this way of thinking is that it encourages educators to focus on the goals of the current game of schooling exclusively rather than on the skills, knowledge and abilities that kids will really need beyond our hallowed halls. Even the mavericks who understand this have high stakes tests to remind them not to stray to far off the beaten path.

As I watch the current federal focus on education and attempt to divine it’s goals, I am disheartened by what looks an awful lot like more of the same visionless rhetoric and teacher blaming that have paralyzed us for decades. It is time for a movement between and among the educators who KNOW what kids need because they haven’t stopped learning.

Test scores are indicators that tell us (in some cases) that what we are doing is working but I believe what we’re doing in many cases is wrong. The focus has been on preparing kids for college for as long as compulsion school has existed in America. The assumption then was that preparing kids for a college education would be a good thing for those that attended college and wouldn’t hurt the ones that didn’t.

Largely, the things we teach today are the same things that the Committee of Ten decided we should teach in 1892. 115 years is a long time to hold onto one sacred library of essential knowledge! It is time for a complete overhaul of the core curriculum and this time as we’re deciding what it essential let’s add a freshness date, something like: Best if used in the next year.

We know the world has changed drastically. We know that education is misaligned with the expectations of the real world and we know that we are struggling to catch up. Focusing first on what we teach might just be the spark we need to breathe life into a revolution that our kids need us to start and win.

I call upon the Obama administration to STOP doing business as usual and get serious about taking a fresh look at what it is that today’s kids really need. The three R’s and teacher blaming through test scores is not what we need. It might be politically expedient to continue to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic but our kids deserve better.

There are SO many educators and administrators that get it, who know we need to do things differently and they are brave enough to risk much in order to serve their kids and families. I think it’s time the calvary came over the hill or at least stopped crippling us while we’re in the battle.

If all we do is continue to focus on today’s end zone, I guarantee we will lose the game.