The Future of Public Education

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What is the Future of Public Education?
      Have we labored under the delusion or illusion of Americas greatness the last 20 years. Are we neglecting public education so we can balance budgets, especially 21st century academic and vocational skills. When we neglect current curriculum, 21st century skills we are creating a true digital/knowledge divide that leaves students with no future. All but a few public schools can focus on critical/modern academic areas because of budgetary constraints. Area such as IT, computer programming, web development, engineering, medical science, advanced math and science are not possible with no money.


     We are still debating full-day kindergarten and extending the school year, REALLY?!  The Common Core Standards redress the lack of academic rigor the last 10-20 years but does little for promoting 21st century skills that cost real money to implement. Longer school years, early childhood education starting at age 3, full day kindergarten, modern vocational training, small primary class sizes, schools paying for supplies not teachers, and a few more things are just the start to redress 20 years of neglect.
     The rest of the world has modified the agrarian school calendar making it more responsive to a changing future. While we keep the same short agrarian school year that seems to fit budgets more than modern times. At the same time neglecting a rigorous modern academic path because it takes money, teacher buy in, and most important a strong work ethic from our students, parents and educators.
     Public school teachers have become political footballs lately because we have not raised our voice and fought for real change when we saw problems. Teachers are in part to blame as we did not push back when parents, students and administrators demanded we lower standards, pad grades, promote every child, ditch rote memorization and make all lessons fun and easy with no rigorous standards needed. (generalizations) Most teachers spend to much instructional time trying to redress/appease the lowest quartile students and parents with lowered behavioral expectations and or lowered academic standards. The future of public education will be in doubt if we do not demand real change. We are going to warehouse (not educate) tens of millions of students the next 10 years if we leave things the way they are. 

The last ten years has shown us it takes ferocious vigilance to keep greedy/feckless men from doing no evil. We are sacrificing the future of our nation to balancing budgets. Ten years of tax cuts and two wars unfunded have left pubic schools holding the bag for many sate budgets. Sean Taylor Dyslexic Teacher