Students, Teachers, and Parents: Working Together to Improve Education

       Education, as with most things in life, works best when everyone works together.

       Of course, parents and students and teachers don't always agree about what's best for education.  So I've devised a plan for systemic improvement:

Concentrate solely on the school that your children attend.

      You see, we view education in the entire United States differently than we view education in the schools our children attend.  For years Gallop has polled parents about their views of education; and for years they have received essentially the same results:

1. We are not happy with the state of schools in the United States.
2. We are happy with the state of the school in our community.

       It happened again this year.  In 2016, only 43% of those polled said that they are Completely Satisfied or Very Satisfied with quality of education in the United States.  Of these same people (same poll; same year), 76% said that they are Completely Satisfied or Very Satisfied with quality of education that their children are receiving.

       So here's my plan:  

Let's just do everything we can do improve the school(s) our children attend.

       The U.S. is too big.  17,000 school districts. 100,000 schools.  50,000,000 students.  Who can even comprehend the immensity of such a huge system???

       If we all just concentrate our energies on the schools in our community, we have a much better chance of seeing real improvement.  Better teachers, better students, better learning.  It can be done if we all do our part for our own schools.  And when the community disagrees on something, let's listen to each other and compromise on a solution that is best for our students and best for our community.  Every wins when we work together.

       (And isn't "working together" a lesson that we want all of our children to learn?)