Words count, and educators must think carefully about how they describe their work, especially when talking to policy makers and community members.
Last year, Learning First Alliance (LFA) member organizations shared their perspectives and expertise in the “Transforming Learning” blog in Education Week, describing the work their members and stakeholders do to support public education throughout their careers. If you stumbled onto any of these postings, you learned that public education professionals work tirelessly to meet the needs of their students and that there is no silver bullet to fix what doesn’t work in public schools. One goal of these essays was to reiterate what we know to be true as professional educators and seasoned policy makers, community members, and parents. Another goal was to frame the language for our individual and collective discussions about public schools in this country and the role those schools and districts play in our American way of life:
- Universal, publicly funded, education is our country’s most important historic asset and needs commitment and support from all of us to succeed whether we have children in the schools or not.
- Meeting the needs and increased achievement requirements for all students is a complicated, multifaceted, and nuanced assignment.
- Professional educators and elected school officials at the state and local level do not support the status quo when that status quo has proven inadequate or unsuccessful in meeting student needs.
- Many, if not most, public schools do an excellent job of supporting student achievement, but when they don’t, we all need to work together to make the changes necessary to serve students well, regardless of their socioeconomic or family situation.
- The knowledge and experience of public educators and policy makers should be respected, heard, and acted upon if we are to achieve sustainable, systemic improvement in the public schools.
- Strengthening public education requires a collective effort, not one that appeals to individual self-interest in the short term, but one that considers what’s best for all children now and in the long term.
- We should evaluate all “reform” efforts for effectiveness, and when those initiatives work well they should be shared widely to scale up good practice.
- Competition for dollars to fund public schools saps time, energy, and resources from the important work that educators do. Until we are ruthless in our examination of how we fund public schools, which currently results in poor communities with insufficient financial and human support, we won’t achieve the progress we need.
We also know there’s much work to be done to be more aggressive in showcasing public schools, districts, and communities that are exemplary in meeting all their students’ needs. All of us must work at moving the national narrative about public education writ large from “we’re failing” to “we’re working together to improve all our public schools.” Those of us in the field acknowledge that there’s work to be done, but we also know that we must do it together if we’re to succeed. We urge you to join us in a solution-oriented dialogue with the goal of strengthening the institution of public schooling and our nation. And we invite you to abandon finding fault and placing blame on those who work in public schools, so that not only the narrative around our work but the results of our effort will prove positive and provide the results we all want and need.
Citation: Williams, C.S. (2013). Backtalk: Speak carefully about public schools. Phi Delta Kappan, 95 (1), 80.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cheryl Scott Williams
CHERYL SCOTT WILLIAMS is the executive director of the Learning First Alliance, a partnership of 16 education associations including PDK International.
