Even though I have ideas about a variety of topics, my blog about education was intended to draw attention to the product of the system. Every young person that gets a diploma should have some expectation of what that certificate is worth. Symbolically a high school diploma represents a level of achievement that should be measurable. The minimum standards for high school graduation should give every kid the tools to do something. I don’t suggest that it should be college prep for every kid, but there should be prep for some “next step”. We are graduating kids who are unable to read, solve problems or communicate at junior high levels. How can that be acceptable to anyone in the school system? We are missing the boat with a good percentage of the “graduates”.
My comments are intended to raise an issue in my community and talk about how my community can address a local problem. We tend to cave in to organizations with agendas when we develop our local policies because we are not up for the fight.
We can’t roll over because we are not up for the fight. That is forfeiting our responsibility in the name of expedience.
One thing you suggest is that we already have standards I may not be aware of. And my response would be “I am not looking at standards, I am looking at results.”
If the results are not up to our/my expectations, the standards are either not high enough or there is no system in place that works to achieve the standards. And I think that is the focal point of my comments; the system that works to achieve standards designed to meet local goals.
If it is acceptable to our community that many kids graduate from high school without the ability to do simple tasks, I don’t know why I should be upset. I don’t have to hire the illiterate ones. It is not my responsibility to be concerned about them.
I guess I thought the school board and the superintendent were the ones worrying about achieving the goals and developing the systems that would do so. This idea of educating our kids is not one where a failure rate of 30% or 40% is acceptable.
WASL may be a flawed test system; the goal for all kids meeting “minimum” standards is not. Whether the standards are set at a state level or a local level, it doesn’t matter. The standards set by WASL could be the guide we use to develop higher local standards that we care about right here in our own district. Our local expectations for student learning should always exceed state standards.
Our school board should be demanding that our superintendent develop a plan where a Snohomish Assessment of Student Learning sets benchmarks for testing/assessing at predetermined points along the way so that in core disciplines there are clear expectations and consequences for failing to meet them. There need to be consequences for students, teachers and administrators for failure. Certainly the consequences for the kids will be felt when we turn them out to the world after graduation when many of them discover how the system moved them along but failed to deliver an education.
Society suffers the consequences of this failure as well. I would prefer that we be a little hard-nosed with a fourth grader, a seventh grader and a sophomore rather than a twenty year old with a gun and a bag of drugs.
We can make a difference in our own community without standing for comparison to our neighbors. We can choose to set higher standards. We can adopt methods that work to achieve those standards, even if they may be a little controversial. We can take responsibility for the Snohomish School District.
In the end, it is the results we are looking for.
No Loss for Words 
Quality of OPPORTUNITY or Quality of OUTCOME, what is our mandate?
by Steve DanaI spent all day Monday being a guest speaker at Snohomish High School. My friend Tuck Gionet teaches Economics and Government to high school seniors in all of his five classes. He was gracious enough to allow me to interact with his students as they discussed whether government’s role should be to insure to citizens quality of “opportunity” or “outcome.”
This was the fifth or sixth time for me in Mr. Gionet’s class. It was the first time I spent the day talking about their subject matter rather than focusing on my candidacy for office. My assignment was to work into the discussion my political perspective without actually campaigning. Mr. Gionet and I did not tell the kids in advance too much about my political persuasion, he wanted them to figure out my political point of view based upon my responses to the questions during the discussion. That idea went out the window right away since I couldn’t come up with any applications where government had a role in guaranteeing the outcome of anything.
The students are required to write a paper this week comparing and contrasting the two, declaring a preference for one and then defending the choice. It was clear from the interaction that some had given the assignment some thought already because they asked me good questions. It became clear to the students in every class that I had strong feelings about both sides of the argument.
The most challenging aspect of the day was remembering what part of the subject matter I had discussed with which class. All five classes were doing the same assignment and I wanted to standardize at least a part of my presentation for all of them then launch into the actual discussion with the kids. After you have done your spiel two or three times, you forget whether you shared a particular anecdote that demonstrated a point or not. By the end of the day, my feet were sore, my voice was hoarse and I was really parched. That teaching thing is a tough job!
It’s hard convincing some kids that education is an opportunity rather than a given. We talked about how our state constitution calls for education to be the paramount responsibility of state government. We weren’t so clear about whether it meant the opportunity to get an education or the guarantee that all students would get one. We talked about how some kids put more effort into school work than others and as a result got more out of the experience.
I tried to demonstrate to them that as they get older and encounter choices in their lives the quality of their opportunities will ultimately determine how far they get in life. Most of the kids have so few life experiences they fail to grasp the importance of quality opportunities until they are lost. Many of the kids have been so sheltered from the realities of the world that they already have a sense of entitlement. That distresses me!
In the course of the day, discussions in each class went in a different direction. As a champion for “opportunity” I tried to steer the discussion to the importance of “personal choices” and taking responsibility for them. In a free society, people need the opportunity to choose how hard they are willing to work to achieve a level of success. Government does not have a role in guaranteeing a successful outcome for any segment of society except those individuals with demonstrable handicaps that would prevent them from taking advantage of available opportunities.
The other argument that came up on more than one occasion was the role of government in curtailing opportunity for some when it substantially damaged others. “Ethics” in life and business might be a topic for discussion another day, but Monday the regulatory role of government did not fit with arguments supporting the “opportunities” of capitalism and personal initiative.
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