Higher Standards and Community Involvement

Last week, I highlighted Top Ten Challenges Facing America Today and number four on the list was the Failing Education System. Earlier this week, NYTimes columnist Bob Herbert wrote a piece called Where the Bar Ought to Be about the education system in the United States. He profiled a passionate Harlem charter school teacher, Deborah Kenny. She has found success using the following philosophy:

The majority of the youngsters come into the middle schools performing at three to four years behind their grade levels. Within a very short time, they are on the fast track toward college. In 2008, when the math and science test scores came in, Ms. Kenny’s eighth graders had achieved 100 percent proficiency. It was not a fluke.

What’s ironic is that the teachers are doing everything but teaching to the tests. Ms. Kenny’s goals for the youngsters in her schools are the same as those that she had for her own three children, who grew up in a comfortable suburban environment and are now in college. Merely passing a standardized test was hardly something to aspire to.

“I had five core things in mind for my kids, and that’s what I want for our students,” she said. “I wanted them to be wholesome in character. I wanted them to be compassionate and to see life as a responsibility to give something to the world. I wanted them to have a sophisticated intellect. I wanted them to be avid readers, the kind of person who always has trouble putting a book down. And I raised them to be independent thinkers, to lead reflective and meaningful lives.”

It never crossed Ms. Kenny’s mind that a rich and abiding intellectual life was out of the reach of kids growing up in a tough urban environment.

To me, this exemplifies the approach that we should try to replicate throughout the country. We should encourage a sense of common responsibility to our communities, get involved, help each other, and hold each other to higher standards. We can do better.