School Failure, Who's Fault Is It?

PLEASE NOTE: Some of this post is 110% my opinion. If you don't like my opinions, please spare yourself a rise in blood pressure and read something else. I hear the weather channel can be riveting. Since this is a "read at your own risk" kind of post, I have included a "jump break" so that you have to click "read more" in order to read the rest of it. I know, it annoys me, too.



I remember reading about the results of Central's assessment earlier this year, so I was happy to stumble onto this report on the KDE website: Hopkins County District Leadership Assessment Report (January 2012). I did not read the entire report, but there was one thing really jumped out at me. Sorry, I didn't make a note of what page this came from. Since I didn't read the whole thing, it was one of the first few pages, I'm sure.

2. Deficiency:

There is a wide-spread perception that the failure to value education in a segment of the community limits the effectiveness of instruction in persistently low achieving schools.

Next Step:

The superintendent and school board should lead an active, aggressive and comprehensive campaign to promote the value of education throughout the community. This campaign

should engage community, church, business and civic leaders to plan, create, implement and evaluate the effectiveness of a variety of ongoing strategies to involve parents and families in the education of their children. There should be a strong media component to the initiative. A central theme to the initiative should be the promotion of equality of educational
opportunity for children in all parts of the community.

It sounds to me like the folks interviewed for this report are blaming the community for the shortcomings in our school system. Would you agree or disagree that the community is to blame? I'd like to know what role the community plays in the education of our students compared to the role of the actual educators.  I'm just guessing when I say that I imagine a lot of our teachers are members of our communities and that they were also students in our school system. I just find it really hard to believe that our communities are not in support of education.

Food for Thought: Does our community value education? Does a failure to value education result in a school's failure?