We All Win!

With the testing season just around the corner, the “race” to equip students with the skills as well as knowledge to be successful on end of grade or end of course tests will go into overdrive.  The last minute "cram" or "review" for those students on grade level will hopefully "do no harm".  For students whom need a full year of instruction will, in all likelihood, not fair so well!

Teetering on the obvious, students entering a grade level behind their peers or who may have barely passed their previous years end of grade assessments are at the greatest risk.  Students significantly behind are already significantly disadvantaged and unless we have the courage to radically shift our approach to address failed learning as well as the failure to learn, those students will not advance towards standard.  Please note; this is not about closing the performance distance with their peers.  Rather, this is all about each learner meeting or exceeding standards.

The goal, our goal is to have each student, each learner "summit".  Irrespective of how long it takes, the route they take, or order in which they arrive, the goal must be mastery of the standards.

While speaking at SXSWedu two weeks ago, I make the comment that one of our greatest attributes, as a nation is also one of our greatest liabilities - competition.  Competition is part of the American DNA.  We are competitive.  We want to win.  We want to be first.  As the great sports prophet Ricky Bobby stated, "If you ain't first, you're last!"

Competition has served our nation well.  Yet, it has also been a disservice with respect to education.  We know that competition results in "winners" and "losers".  However, this mindset works against the very goal we desire to achieve in education.  Simply put, we can't afford losers as a result of our education system.  We must have winners - all winners.

Lest you think this is idealistic socialistic babble, please consider that a fundamental tenet of education is to raise individually and collectively the quality of life, the quality of community, and the quality of our nation.  We all benefit from an educated society - hence the commitment to providing a free and public education for all.  

Education has been used to "sort and select" individuals or groups of people with respect to "station in life".  I get this.  I've benefited from education.  My children have benefited as well.  However, I do not believe that I have benefited at the expense of others.  My point, our point!  An educate society benefits each of us not at the expense of any of us.

We continue to confuse the issue and therefore are woefully ineffective in addressing the root causes of failure.  We continue to make way too many erroneous assumptions about the causes of failed learning and the failure to learn.  Consequently, we have and will continue to treat the symptoms and wonder why students are not progressing towards meeting or exceeding standards.

I am convinced that until we make this shift in our thinking we will not make the critical, necessary, and essential shifts in our behavior as well as practice for each learner to benefit from the promises of an education.