Is it really the schools?

It's not very hard to find public school detractors. I hear it all the time when I tell people I want to be a teacher. There is one group that asks why I would want to get into such a horrible system with such little pay. There is another group that says the schools are in such bad shape and they can use someone like me to help turn it around.

The message is out there. In a recent article in Time, also found online here, the headline "Why We're Failing Our Schools" implies that schools need to be fixed. It does not ask whether or not we are failing. It makes the assumption and goes immediately to explaining why. This type of headline is not unique. Readers often do not get past the headlines and absorb the little information headlines give as truth. For those who get past the headline, the article states that "...American schools have been slipping for decades — our students are now 32nd internationally in math scores, 10th in science, 12th in reading." These types of stats are controversial by themselves. They are used by big media and government who do not quite understand how the data is derived and what actually happens inside the schools to attain them.

Our public schools are not that bad! I will concede that there are ideas that can be incorporated into our schools that can make them better (What industry fails this test?). There are bad schools and there are good ones, but the difference is not as clear as test scores and graduation rates, two commonly used barometers of the quality of schools. I went to public school, all my closest friends and my entire family did too. I now have a degree from NYU. My friends and family have degrees from top schools Cornell, Yale, UCI, UCLA, USC, CSUF, CSULB, Stanford, Iowa, and Annapolis.

We are a diverse group. Many of us are still pursuing higher education and others have started careers in law, public relations, politics, the military, education, business, etc. However, we do have a few things in common. Besides public school, one thing in common with all these people is support and encouragement from family. I don't mean that in a warm, fuzzy way either. All these people had strong expectations to make something of themselves and anything less than success in school was not an option. Their families were there not just to nudge them in the right direction, but to give a full-forced shoving.

One might point to the success of certain charter schools or private schools. They will brag about their graduation rate and other barometers of success. They will even compare their levels to that of nearby public schools. One simple reason for all their success is that the kids who attend these schools are the same ones with families like the aforementioned. Of course public schools achieve at lower rates; alternative schools are stealing away the students who have the support that makes them more likely to succeed!

Our school system is not broken. Yes, it requires constant maintenance and progression. Education deserves all the attention it can get to keep pushing it to improve, but it is not a failing system. There is evidence that points to strong families as the key to educational success. When schools truly fail, the first step to repairing the problem is not changing the curriculum, but fixing our families.