I’ve been accused of being a grim reaper of sorts when it comes to my public education outlook. My critics tell me that nothing is ever good enough when it comes to these places we call school. Well, if wanting the best for our kids when it comes to their learning and at the same time believing our present educational system is responsible for most, if not all, of our struggles, then call me what you want.
Yesterday I suggested our public education system is in a state of catastrophic failure. Today, I share the opinion of another skeptic who believes schools are in a state of crisis. That person is Bev Perdue, former governor of North Carolina, founder of digiLEARN, a national non-profit dedicated to accelerating digital learning for all ages, current chair of the independent, non-partisan board that sets policy for the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP, our Nation’s Report Card,) and former teacher. Last week Perdue wrote an opinion piece for EdWeek titled “What If We Treated Public Education Like the Crisis It Is?” I’d like to share some of Perdue’s thoughts, and add some commentary along with way.
Perdue begins her article by stating “…I firmly believe our nation has an educational crisis on it hands. It’s never been more urgent to correct course and make education a priority to prevent a disastrous loss of talent that will ensue if we don’t.” She goes on and supports her claim with several pieces of sobering evidence why our school are in crisis.
As noted in an earlier column, Perdue cites a recent survey where 55 percent of teachers said that the pandemic had prompted them to consider retiring or leaving the profession.
She points to the fact that “Many children – especially children of color, children in poverty, and children from rural communities – are being left behind. Long-term reading and math trend scores show a clear, widening gap between highest- and lowest-performing students.”
Regarding our infrastructure challenges, the former governor points out that 34 percent of black households and 39 percent of Latinx households do not have a wired broadband connection.
Perdue states “More than half of 2021 graduates did not apply to an entry-level job in their field because they felt unqualified. More than 50 million Americans work in low-wage jobs with little chance to get out of poverty, and three-quarters of employees say they can’t find people with the right skills. More than 1 in 6 workers – 25 percent more than before the pandemic – will need to find a new job or learn new skills for their current jobs by 2030.
Perdue, as most policymakers have a tendency to do, has sent a request to U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona that calls for him to create a non-partisan, stakeholder task force to examine what we’ve learned since the seminal education report A Nation at Risk in 1983; to redefine the purpose of education in our country; and to recommend actionable policy solutions for 2022 and beyond.
Perdue goes on to say that this task force, guided by Cardona, could offer guidance on how states could:
“Incorporate equity throughout education policy, with a focus on policies that impact reading and math, so all students, regarding of race, ethnicity, gender identity, or Zip code have the opportunity to succeed;
Evaluate how our nation values and invests in teachers and students;
Reassess how we use data to measure educational progress;
Articulate what students need to learn to be successful in the future; and
Invest in programs, such as preschool for all, that build the foundation for all children to read on grade level by grade 3.”
Perdue’s diagnosis, that our country has an educational crisis on its hands, is spot on. Perdue’s prescription, that we need to form a task force to address equity, lack of investment, improved measurement, work force articulation, and early childhood education, is suspect at best.
I’m sorry, but we’ve had too many politicians and policymakers point to the task force as the antidote to a disease none of those task forces have been able to cure. As far as I can tell, Perdue’s task force and its agenda still operates within the current paradigm we call school.
It’s disappointing that the former governor, and most other Americans, can’t be more creative when it comes to solving what, to me, appears to be a major system’s challenge, requiring a new and different system solution.
A Better Path to Learning 
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