Monthly Archives: December 2012

What Do You Hear?

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To hear, we must listen. And so it was on April 20, 1999, at a scheduled town hall meeting on Safe and Disciplined Schools, I heard an anonymous Caldwell High School student say…

“I think it’s funny how people can come to meetings and complain, but do you actually see them stepping in and doing something about it?”

Will we ever listen to them — parents, students, teachers, and caring citizens?

“Will we hear the call of others?

Adults across our country continue to struggle to be taken seriously on the issues surrounding safe and disciplined schools. As Pedro Noguera put it in his book “City Schools and the American Dream: Reclaiming the Promise of Public Education,” …

‘if we truly seek to create a different future, one that is more peaceful and nonviolent than the present, we must actively go about creating it’ (2003, 141)…

As Katherine C. says, we must ‘do rather than talk’ (The Crucial Voice of the People, Past and Present, pg. 9).”

We must stop racing towards the goals that policies set for us! Instead, leaders must stop talking at us. We all have to start listening and learning from our own past, from our own people. We need to stop wasting our money, our time, and our precious human resources.

People, please ask yourselves; do we have the courage to face the facts, face our own mistakes?

Perfecting our union starts with improving our own quality of thought. It starts with each new generation. That makes it a societal obligation to improve our schools. It starts with safety and discipline — it starts with our devotion to education and our belief that we can do better. As a Virginia Tech survivor (Colin Goddard) said…

“There has to be a way to change the culture of violence in our society.”

If you are listening, what do you hear?

I hear solutions.

Are You Listening Secretary Duncan?

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“The problem here is not what the precise policy shall be but rather how shall decision on that policy be reached.” — Francis Keppel 1966

When the process of “reform” targets improving schools that need improving, it shouldn’t begin with a statement by Secretary Duncan that he stands firm on the idea of “competition” and that he is “holding the line” on what he has already set down for the nation. How does that work when he has also said he will listen? Listen, get people’s advice and input, but, proceed with what has already been decided? Is this how decisions shall be reached? This is a common on-going problem – nationally and in my state of Idaho.

In Idaho, voters turned down the “reform” ideas set by our legislature. So now, the governor is setting up a task force — but citizens need not apply. Only the “stakeholder groups” will be represented in the decision-making process. It appears all levels of government have forgotten their roles in education.

The U.S. Department of Education exists because there has always been unequal access to quality education and it was felt to be a national necessity that our citizens be properly educated. A highly-functional public education system is a proper and necessary function of our government. How does competition produce equal access when those most in need of assistance are dysfunctional when left to their own devices? The very existence of chronically low-performing schools is the proof.

And in a state like Idaho, where we underfund education and continue to document chronically low-performing schools, how can we think that putting the same warring factions together and excluding the public in the conversation will produce better policy? The process matters.

Are you listening Secretary Duncan?