Alienation often begins with boredom. A recent study of 81,000 high school students by the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University [...]]]> In my last blog, I examined the alarming statistics on school-based violence and asked whether turning schools into armed camps was the solution. While access to weapons, gang activity, and bullying present real threats that need to be realistically addressed, I am convinced that much of school-based violence and acting-out lies in dysfunctional and alienating school cultures. This blog is about trust and attachment in schools and why they matter in making schools safe for all kids.

Alienation often begins with boredom. A recent study of 81,000 high school students by the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University indicated that two out of three report being bored in class every day; fewer than 2 percent say they are never bored. When renowned psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi asked high school students, “Overall, how often would you say you love what you are doing in the classroom?” only 16 percent answered “very often.” According to Csikszentmihalyi, when students are engaged, “Alienation gives way to involvement, enjoyment replaces boredom, helplessness turns into a feeling of control.”

There is a strong relationship between engagement and what researchers Anthony Byrk and Barbara Schneider call “relational trust“; engagement unites people in a common sense of purpose. Many schools struggle to develop a culture of purpose, engagement, and trust. In 1932 the founder of the sociology of education Willard Waller observed, “Schools are despotisms in a state of perilous equilibrium.” Schools where violence is common are chronically unable to achieve equilibrium and stability.

Researchers at Claremont University studying four schools in southern California reported that the biggest problems schools face were relational—folks just had a hard time getting along with each other.

When we think of discipline we tend to think of prevention and punishment, but perhaps this is the wrong paradigm for thinking about school safety. A better paradigm is pride and purpose. In June 2012 the Raikes Foundation and the Lumina Foundation published an excellent study, Teaching Adolescents to Become Learners. The results make clear that when schools create what the authors’ refer to as an “academic mindset,” students get better grades and are more likely to continue successfully with their education beyond high school.

An academic mindset includes going to class, doing homework, organizing material, and actively participating in study. When schools encourage tenacity, delayed gratification, self-discipline, and self-control, they are creating conditions of deep learning.

In other words, when schools are more like schools than soft prisons, the staff worries less about who sprayed graffiti on the bathroom walls and more about the quality of students’ essays posted in the hallways. Relational trust is not about sentiment and excuses; it’s about hard work and high expectations.

Creating schools where trust and attachment is present is not a mystical process overseen by a charismatic leader (although that can help). Fundamentally it is a matter of thoughtful design. The Character Education Partnership has identified some of the design elements that contribute to school cultures of trust. These include:

• A welcoming sense of ownership;
• A rich and engaging curriculum;
• Rules and policies that hold all school members to high standards of accountability;
• Traditions and routines built from shared values and standards;
• A problem-solving culture and structure;
• Partnering with parents;
• Norms of a professional culture.

Of course, checklists only get you so far. What really matters is a commitment to those humane values and behaviors that bond people together in relationships of trust and attachment. You would think that this observation would be apparent to all. But, alas, this is not the case. Many schools are alienation factories. But some are exemplars of what can be accomplished when educators create communities of trust. In my next blog we get a chance to visit some schools where the head and heart work together, where school safety is routine, and where violence is rare.

Intellect without heart can lead to alienation and withdrawal—the prime conditions of antisocial behavior. Attachment and trust are not Common Core State Standards, but maybe they ought to be.

Photo Credit: Jahi Chikwendiu, The Washington Post

Unsafe schools are not really schools at all; they are, at best, soft prisons—lives are lost, futures are undermined, and talent is wasted. Without safe schools we will reform over and over again without success. Safety is an indispensable foundation [...]]]> Schools can be tough places for our kids. Middle and high schools, in particular, are susceptible to instability and an ambient student culture of intimidation ranging from casual bullying to bona fide violence. The horrific events at Sandy Hook Elementary School last December put school safety in the headlines, but schools have been struggling with safety issues for many more years.

Unsafe schools are not really schools at all; they are, at best, soft prisons—lives are lost, futures are undermined, and talent is wasted. Without safe schools we will reform over and over again without success. Safety is an indispensable foundation for learning.

This blog is the first of three on school safety. It outlines the extent of the problem and questions whether more police and guns are the solution. The second examines the underlying causes of school violence and the last identifies schools and programs that have successfully created positive, even joyful, cultures of learning where violence simply has no place.

The parameters of the problem

According to the United States Census (2012), nearly 80 percent of our 83,000 public schools can expect one or more violent incidents during the school year. Nearly 30 out of 1,000 students are victimized every year.

The National Center for Education Statistics (2012) reports that annually there are about 828,000 nonfatal school victimizations; 8 percent of high school students are threatened or injured with a gun, knife, or club; and one or more violent crimes occur in 85 percent of all public schools.

These data do not count crimes that go unreported, bullying (in person and online), threats, taunting, pushing and punching, and demeaning speech. And what happens out of school is equally disturbing. For many students, the ride or walk to school and back home is a gauntlet of danger traversed in fear.

These data are stark but in actuality fail to capture the culture of fear that can undermine the educational missions of schools. When nearly 2 million school-related crimes are committed each year, we are looking at a systemic problem that is larger than quantitative measures convey. Fear undermines hope. And without hope, the purpose of education turns to dust.

Is there a quick-fix?

Given how we all feel about protecting our children, it is perhaps natural to think in the short term and reach for quick-fix policies. Some have suggested that more school-based police is the answer. But what are the unintended consequences of imposing what amounts to martial law in the schools?

I have visited schools where students are exposed to repeated security checks, where armed police roam the halls, where random searches are conducted without warning, and where disciplinary measures include arrest for minor crimes. Most of us would not want to send our child to such a militarized environment.

Moreover, the long arm of the law seldom reaches beyond schools educating our most vulnerable students; I have yet to visit a school in a wealthy suburb or a private school where police stand watch at the classroom door.

Erik Eckholm reports (New York Times, April 12, 2013) that there has been a surge in school arrests for misdemeanors and nonviolent behavior. In Texas, for example, police officers based in schools write more than 100,000 misdemeanor tickets every year. Many of these citations are for minor offences such as scuffling, disorderly conduct, and disrupting class. If a student appears before a justice of the peace or in a municipal court his or her offense is publically recorded and follows him or her for many years to come.

African-American and Hispanic students are four times more likely to be arrested or given criminal citations than white students.

Another quick-fix idea is to arm school personnel. The National Rifle Association and their supporters have suggested we train educators about the use of firearms and increase the number of guns in the schools; some advocate arming teachers and administrators.

Is this the answer? Do we really want our schools to resemble armed camps? Or are we missing the point altogether? Police solve crimes; is the problem of school violence a crime problem or a school culture problem? In my next blog we look at some of the underlying causes of school violence.

Photo Credit: Michael Stravato for The New York Times

On the one hand, we are getting smarter. Since the 1980s political scientist James Flynn has tracked the rise in IQs globally. For instance, between 1953 and 2006 IQs have gone up a whopping 17.4 points. Rising IQs are now known as the “Flynn Effect.”

On the other hand, only 23 percent of fourth-graders can identify George Washington as the first president of the United States. Comedian Jay Leno conducts informal street interviews with Americans about their knowledge of geography and current affairs. In a recent interview, a college student identified Europe as a country bordering the [...]]]> We live in paradoxical times.

On the one hand, we are getting smarter. Since the 1980s political scientist James Flynn has tracked the rise in IQs globally. For instance, between 1953 and 2006 IQs have gone up a whopping 17.4 points. Rising IQs are now known as the “Flynn Effect.”

On the other hand, only 23 percent of fourth-graders can identify George Washington as the first president of the United States. Comedian Jay Leno conducts informal street interviews with Americans about their knowledge of geography and current affairs. In a recent interview, a college student identified Europe as a country bordering the United States. Call it the “Leno Effect.”

What gives? Can we be getting smarter and less informed at the same time? Is the information highway really the disinformation byway?

I don’t think so. We are experiencing an unprecedented knowledge explosion. Today, we can see to the edge of eternity, unlock nature’s secret design, map our own genetic code, and instantly communicate with people around the world.

In 1938, author and visionary H.G. Wells published The World Brain. Long before the invention of the Internet he foresaw a “world encyclopedia” in which knowledge was free, universal, and authoritative. What was science fiction in 1938 is now a reality.

Now, we are wired together in a global virtual commons of learners. The marriage of human curiosity with shared intelligence is birthing a revolutionary networked ultra-intelligence available anywhere, any time.

So, we are definitely not getting dumber.

Yet, we educators dither. In my recent study of how digital natives learn, I found many of our antique notions of education are alive and wildly out of sync with the capacities and imaginations of non-linear learners. Today’s students are 21st-century learners.

When we try forcing the genie of networked intelligence back into the bottle of traditional textbooks, lectures, and multiple-choice evaluations, students are turned off.  Assembly-line education makes no sense in the age of self-organizing intelligence.

Blended learning is a good step forward. It is difficult, however, to overstate the urgency of the moment. A recent study at Indiana University revealed that nearly all American high school students are bored in school.

The high school dropout rate hovers around 40 percent in many cities.

To engage today’s digital learners, we need a new ecology of learning shaped by the most dynamic qualities of ultra-intelligence: critical reflection, empirical reasoning, distributed intelligence, and metacognition.

I hope the Leno Effect can be reversed. A nation that doesn’t know the location of Mexico and Canada is leaning backward just as the trajectory of history is speeding forward. Time to stop dithering and start doing.

Photo Credit: AP Photo

Levin’s murder sent shock waves throughout New York City and its public schools. In honor of Levin’s memory, a new high school was founded five years later; the Jonathan Levin High School for Media and Communications was opened in the same building where the slain teacher had taught.

Nearly a million dollars in scholarship money poured in, a ball field was built, and computers [...]]]> In 1997, Jonathan Levin, the son of former Time Warner Chair Jerry Levin and a dedicated high school teacher in the South Bronx, was murdered in his home by one of his students. The apparent motivation was robbery.

Levin’s murder sent shock waves throughout New York City and its public schools. In honor of Levin’s memory, a new high school was founded five years later; the Jonathan Levin High School for Media and Communications was opened in the same building where the slain teacher had taught.

Nearly a million dollars in scholarship money poured in, a ball field was built, and computers were donated. It was a fitting tribute to what the New York City Department of Education called the young teacher’s  “spirit, values, commitment, and impassioned belief” that every child has a right to a quality education.

Levin High School was a symbol of success. Early on, its graduation rate approached 90 percent and elite colleges accepted many of its graduates.

But a decade later the school has fallen on hard times. The graduation rate has dropped to 31 percent, the fifth lowest in the city. Enrollment declined from 484 in 2007 to 339 this year. And half of the school’s students have said they do not always feel safe.

The New York City Department of Education has also given Levin High School poor marks. The school received a D overall on the 2011-2012 annual progress report. It fared even worse on individual assessments of student performance and college readiness.

Predictably, Levin High School is on the verge of closure. The city’s school oversight board will vote later this month, despite impassioned pleas from students and parents to keep the school open and arguments from civil rights groups who say Levin High School’s closing (among many other school closings) will disproportionately affect poor students of color.

The anticipated closing of Levin High School puts the issue of school governance squarely in the policy crosshairs. School closures that look rational on paper become messy in the real world.

People identify with their schools, for better or for worse. Schools are more than the sum of their test scores and graduation rates. Poor communities rely on schools to be safe havens for their children.

The sad truth, however, is that schools in a declining tailspin, such as Levin High School, are almost never able to solve the problems they face without a massive overhaul.

Organizational cultures don’t change overnight; they are bone deep. It is difficult to prove a negative and, therefore, we don’t know for certain if Levin High School could accomplish a dramatic turn around, but the odds are against it.

Perhaps we need a new paradigm for opening schools. Before opening any school, they should be required to demonstrate a solid academic and financial foundation. The test of any organization is its strength over time, and while the numbers don’t always tell the story, they don’t lie either.

We need to create schools that perform every year. That would be a tribute to Jonathan Levin that would stand the test of time.

Photo Credit: Richard Perry/The New York Times

For Each and Every Child highlights five major policy areas: equitable school finance, improved teachers, leaders and curricula, expanding high-quality early education, mitigating poverty’s effects, [...]]]> What will it take to create a system of schools that prepare all children to thrive and succeed in this century? This question is at the heart of the U.S. Department of Education’s very recent report, For Each and Every Child: A Strategy for Education Equity and Excellence. Directed by Congress in 2010, the department called together a distinguished 27- member commission to recommend polices to overcome the “staggering” achievement gap between wealthy and poor children.

For Each and Every Child highlights five major policy areas: equitable school finance, improved teachers, leaders and curricula, expanding high-quality early education, mitigating poverty’s effects, and greater accountability. Taken together this bundle of policies constitutes the commission’s program for greater educational equity.

While these proposals are not strikingly original, they are laudable. I fear, however, they will be discussed, filed and forgotten: five years from now America’s underserved children will still attend schools unfit for learning. Sadly, I have history on my side: when it comes to educating poor children our national record is dismal dating back to the 19th century.

We have a bad habit ─talking the talk but not walking the walk when it comes to solving the problem of unequal educational opportunities. The fact that the commission’s proposals do not include cost estimates suggests we may be admiring the problem instead of fixing it. We are in our policy comfort zone. Perhaps it’s time for a reality check.

Here is the tough-love news: unequal educational opportunities are baked into the system. In a perverse way the system is eerily effective: it reproduces inequalities like clockwork. Educational inequalities are not an unfortunate by-product of an otherwise fair system, they are utterly predictable.  Horace Mann’s “Great Equalizer” has become the “Great Unequalizer.”

In last week’s New York Times, Columbia University Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz emphasized what is increasingly well-known ─ economic mobility is lower in the United States than most of European countries and in all of Scandinavia.  He stated, “Unless current trends in education are reversed, the situation is likely to get even worse. In some cases it seems as if policy has actually been designed to reduce opportunity: government support for many state schools has been steadily gutted over the last decades ─and especially the last few years.”

To create a fair, dynamic system of schools we need a Big Think, not a rehash of ideas that have been kicking around policy shops for over thirty years. By a Big Think I mean at least four things:

1. Let’s start with the real needs of disadvantaged children today;
2. Let’s have the courage to honestly examine what we mean by equity in an age of innovation and opportunity;
3. Let’s embrace change and create schools of purpose, energy, community and creativity for all children; and
4. Let’s walk the walk and fund excellence for all children.

None of these things, however, will bend history toward justice if we are not willing to unpack the system as it currently operates. Reducing structural inequalities requires structural changes–including rethinking the nature of the classroom, the nature of learning, and the organization of schooling. The Department of Education is to be congratulated for taking an important step down the steep and stony road of educational equity. We need to expand this conversation and find the political will to turn fine words into real actions.

Photo Credit: GWU

Granted infrastructure is not a sexy topic. Making [...]]]> In his State of the Union Address on Tuesday night President Obama laid out a wide array of programs and initiatives including many in education. Most of them laudable and important, but I must confess one really got my attention. Roughly mid-way through his speech he proposed a Fix-it-First program, “to put people to work as soon as possible on our most urgent repairs.” To get this done he is proposing a Partnership to Rebuild America which would attract private capital to up-grade the country’s infrastructure including “modern schools worthy of our children.”

Granted infrastructure is not a sexy topic. Making schools safe, sunny and inviting does not inspire headlines. Compared to charter schools, the Common Core State Standards, or whether or not schools should teach creationism school construction sounds like a big yawn.

But consider this: A recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that when they ranked the top 30 industrialized counties according to the well-being of children the United States came in 25^th. We are the fifth worst in the rate of children who lack more than 4 of the following 8 educational possessions: a desk to study, a quiet place to work, a computer for schoolwork, educational software, an Internet connection, a calculator, a dictionary and school textbooks.

And these facts don’t tell the whole story. A tour of invisible America where our poor and working poor families send their children to school is a journey through dilapidated school buildings that ought to be retired from service. Between the dark lighting, peeling paint, ancient furniture and flacking asbestos these schools are more befitting as settings for Charles Dickens stories than 21^st century learning.

We were once a proud people who built state of the art schools as a matter of public policy. No so much today. Yes, in the wealthier neighborhoods students usually attend swanky schools with all the trimmings including playing fields and theaters, but as you descend the socio-economic scale the school buildings get worse and worse until at the bottom we find crowded, unhealthy, and unsafe 19^th century schools unfit for children.

Does it matter that our poorest students attend schools that are essentially inhabitable? You bet it does. Where you go to school matters not only in terms of facilities but also in terms of self-image, and self-efficacy. We respond to our environments and draw life lesson from how we are treated. If I go to a school that is, in reality, a run-down soft prison, what lessons am I likely to draw about my life chances?

There is much talk about public/ private partnerships in education. The President’s suggestion that a Partnership to Rebuild America start to repair old schools and build new ones may not arouse education policy passions, but it might, just might, actually make a difference in the lives of families, teachers and students.

Photo Credit: AP

While the implementation of the Common Core State [...]]]> Last spring I completed a study of American high schools; I looked at five schools serving very different economic and social communities. Here is the headline: If a student is not lucky enough to attend a high school located in an upper-middle or middle-class neighborhood, he or she is likely to get a watered-down, uninspiring, and inadequate set of academic choices—often taught in a hit-or-miss manner. If a student attends a school in an area of concentrated poverty, his or her course of study often consists of worksheets, out-of-date textbooks, and more worksheets.

While the implementation of the Common Core State Standards in 2014-15 will not solve the problem of providing equality of educational opportunities to all students, it is part of the solution. Without a robust, demanding curriculum, education flounders. This is not new news. I think Socrates mentioned it early and often.

High standards would seem to be an educational reform that would unite educators and the public. After all, we consistently find ourselves in the middle of the pack in international testing. Many of our kids are being frozen out of the emerging job market. Lack of verbal and math skills is essential for success in our dynamic and competitive world.

Lately, however, there has been some serious political pushback against the Common State Standards. Indiana Republican State Sen. Scott Schneider, for example, has introduced a bill that forbids the Indiana State Board of Education from adopting the Common Core State Standards.  According to the Terre Haute Tribune-Star, much of the opposition to the standards comes from the Tea Party and such special interest groups as Americans for Prosperity who see the Common Core as another example of encroachment of the federal government on state and local autonomy. The website, Common Core: Education without Representation, makes the case that the Common Core is nothing less than an assault on states’ rights. The Pioneer Institute in Massachusetts worries that the Common Core may actually lower state standards.

Just for the record, the standards were not developed by the federal government, but by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. And adoption is voluntary.  Nonetheless, moves to resist the implementation of the Common Core are cropping up not only in Indiana and Massachusetts but in California, Utah, and a handful of other states.

This is a dangerous development because for decades the nation’s poorest students have been academically shortchanged. Standards help reverse this equation. In a recent national study I completed with my colleague Constance Clark, we discovered that high standards help struggling students to achieve at a higher academic level than their peers in states with low standards.

What is the best ethical and policy frame for understanding the long-range implications of implementing the Common Core: a states’ rights frame or an educational justice frame?  While I am a firm believer that public education is the property of the people and that local control keeps education close to the people, I also know that millions of young people are having their right to a world-class education violated every day.

I have a hard time reconciling the suffering of so many children with the abstract principle of states’ rights when I know it means that more generations of children and young adults will continue to lead lives on the economic and social margins. In reality, there is not a conflict between the two frames—there is a big difference between a national initiative and a federal mandate. The Common Core has been developed by the states, not the federal government.  We need to stand up for educational justice without reservation and stop creating ideological wars that paralyze common sense, resulting in an educational status quo, which every day dooms millions of American kids to educational failure. We can do better.

Photo Credit: Biola University

Students like Tabitha deserve a lot better. They deserve an education that prepares them for the 21st century, not the 19th century. The economy that supported the good people [...]]]> In the Sunday Washington Post reporter Anne Hull tells the moving, heart-breaking story of Tabitha Rouzzo, a hardworking, earnest, working class young woman, desperately trying to make a better life for herself in New Castle, Pa. The odds against Tabitha are steep. The Rust Belt is in a deep depression and finding well-paying work is nearly impossible; going to college is a dream. “This town is dragging everyone down,” Tabitha told Hull.

Students like Tabitha deserve a lot better. They deserve an education that prepares them for the 21st century, not the 19th century. The economy that supported the good people of New Castle is sinking fast, never to be restored.

A recent book, The New Geography of Jobs, observes this sad reality. Author Enrico Moretti writes about the “hollowing out of the American labor market” where “job opportunities for middle-wage, middle-skill white-collar and blue-collar workers have declined sharply.” Moretti describes how our economy is experiencing a long-term shift from manufacturing to what he calls “innovation,” the driver of prosperity is knowledge and ideas. One measure of this monumental transformation is the explosion of patent grants, says Moretti. In the last decade, patents have doubled from 400,000 per year to 800,000 and the trend continues on a steep incline.

Tabitha and other middle class, working class, and poor students are not being prepared for the “New Economy of Innovation.” And college attendance is no guarantee that graduates are prepared for the future. Today, the McKinsey Center for Government released a new report on education and employment. Worldwide, 75 million young people are unemployed.  McKinsey reports that half of young graduates are “not sure that their post-secondary education has improved their chances of finding a job.” Colleges and universities appear to overrate the degree to which they prepare students for the life of work. According to McKinsey, “72 percent of educational institutions felt that their graduates were ready for the job market, but only 42 percent of employers agreed.”

As the English would say, this is a very sticky wicket. If college is financially out of reach for many middle class, working class, and poor kids, and if colleges and universities aren’t measuring up in preparing many of their graduates for success in the New Economy of Innovation, what is the path forward?

One reality-based and practical way forward is to rethink the American high school and to rethink our near obsession with single and simplistic measures of academic success. Holding the B.A. up as the only measure of academic success shuts out many, many students from non-affluent families from taking pride in their unique abilities and learning the 21st century skills that are required to thrive in a world of innovation, rapid change and uncertainty.

An example of how this might work is the Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-Tech) that opened last year in Brooklyn. According to the New York Times, P-Tech “weaves high school and college curriculums into a six-year program tailored for a job in the technology industry.” By 2017 P-Tech will offer associates degrees in applied science in computer information systems and electromechanical engineering technology. The school’s curriculum was developed with IBM. Students are admitted by lottery; 88 percent qualify for free or reduced-priced lunch. This is reform from the ground up. Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, North Carolina and Tennessee are planning to open P-Tech type schools.

Six-year technical schools are not the only answer to giving students like Tabitha a decent shot at life, but it’s a strong start. It is one piece of a much larger puzzle we need to solve — not tomorrow, but today. We owe it to Tabitha.

Photo Credit: Our Campus Market

But I wonder if this will be enough. It seems unlikely that the next four years will be a period of quiet tinkering: The educational crisis will not wait, and there is a very big and [...]]]> Election night is over and most pundits agree that federal educational policy is unlikely to change dramatically in the next four years. In Washington, DC, this week at the Excellence in Action National Summit, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan promised to “stay the course,” emphasizing early childhood education, holding teachers to higher standards, recruiting more qualified teachers, improving college graduation rates, and supporting community colleges.

But I wonder if this will be enough. It seems unlikely that the next four years will be a period of quiet tinkering: The educational crisis will not wait, and there is a very big and very fast policy change headed our way— in 2014 the Common Core State Standards will be implemented in 46 states and the District of Columbia. When students are evaluated on their ability to master those standards in 2015, many American kids across the class spectrum will be labeled failures. While some policymakers and politicians may consider this a salutary “wake-up call,” the repercussion on students, teachers, families, schools, school districts, and states is likely be a tsunami of angst and anger. Finger-pointing will be raised to a new art form, and suddenly colleges and universities will find they have far fewer students to enroll. Despite the best efforts of College Board President David Coleman to reassure states and local communities that the Common Core is not a federal initiative, I suspect that finely tuned sematic distinctions will not hold back a flood of resentment.

Consider the fate of superstar education reformer Tony Bennett, the former GOP Indiana State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Unexpectedly, he was defeated this November by relatively unknown and under-financed Democrat Glenda Ritz. Bennett is the very model of the activist reformer. He revamped how teachers are evaluated, orchestrated the state takeover of struggling schools, supported vouchers, and expanded charter schools. Most importantly, he is a strong supporter of the Common Core State Standards.

Ritz achieved victory by putting together an unlikely coalition. Yes, she had the support of the teachers unions, but she also had the support of many conservatives in Bennett’s deep red counties and right-leaning Indianapolis suburbs. After the election, Bennett acknowledged the importance of this shift: “She did a very good job of appealing to the strong conservative base who had problems with the Common Core.”

Local control became a rallying cry in Indiana that cut across traditional political lines. Many Americans strongly believe in local control. If Thomas Jefferson could return from his grave at Monticello, he might agree. Yet, even Jefferson could be wrong; his close colleague, James Madison, advocated a strong national vision for public education. In this case, Madison was right. We are one people; we need a unifying vision of public education. There is a difference between a national transformative vision and a heavy-handed top down federal imposition of mandates and regulations. This difference needs to be clearly articulated. High standards are a framework, not an administrative and intellectual straitjacket.

The good news is that we already have an example of how forethought and communication can turn potential conflict into a deeper understanding of what is at stake. Kentucky was the first state to align its state assessments to the Common Core; when the results of the first assessments were published in 2012, the test scores dropped dramatically. In elementary reading, for example, in 2011, 76 percent of students scored proficient or higher; in 2012, 48 percent did so. There was little public outcry because Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday had enlisted the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce as part of a yearlong public relations campaign. Their message: These scores were a minor setback, but Kentucky’s overall direction was the right one.

But success will also require leadership. Rightly or wrongly, bringing to light that so many American students are underachievers is likely to result in a political backlash similar to the one that defeated Tony Bennett. President Obama and Secretary Duncan need to start educating the American people now about why we need high standards and what we can do to ensure that students can meet those standards before they are implemented in 2014.

Photo Credit: Tim Grimes, TheStatehouseFile.com