The Best Day of Our Job (So Far...)
As you may have gathered from some of our previous blogs, we continue to do talks with students whenever we can. At these talks, we try to learn what young people think should be changed in our schools and ask if they would like to become leaders in this emerging national youth movement for quality public education.
We had a talk yesterday with 46 students from the National Young Leaders Conference here in DC, and we were just floored by their understanding of the issues at play, their passion for making a difference, and their excitement for taking Our Education's national student petition campaign back to their high schools in the fall.
A few of the most interesting debates they had:
- The students raised and then explored a big question that contemporary school reformers are struggling with today: it's easy to say that we should have high quality schools held to a high standard, but what do you do with the schools that fail to meet those standards over and over again? One of the misconceptions about youth views on schools is that the students want their schools to get the "get out of jail free card" over and over again, that their schools shouldn't be punished if they fail to meet state goals. These students saw clearly that our standards must mean something - and that means having real consequences for schools that fail... though we didn't have enough time to decide what those consequences might be (don't worry... that's what this is for).
- The students had a deep discussion about school finance issues. There was consensus in the room that 1.) there is a resource problem in our schools, and that 2.) it's not just about having more money, it's about spending that money in a more effective and equitable way and having the political committment to sustain these kinds of necessary resources.
- There was also a lot of talk about the hyper-focus on standardized tests in some schools and districts. However, several students made a great point that it isn't the policy of standardized testing itself that is the problem - it's the way that some schools and districts make the tests the be-all and end-all of classroom instruction as opposed to letting teachers focus on creative, proven ways of teaching content & critical thinking skills.
Needless to say, I can't wait until we have days - and not minutes - for students to dig deep into these issues and produce a definitive document on student priorities in our schools. And I'm convinced that this day will come soon... because these 45 students - and the thousands of others that we are connecting with - showed a contagious excitement for getting the word out in their schools and communities.
As we said good-bye to the NYLC students after our hour together, one of the students, a smart (tall) fellow from Texas, asked us if he could take a picture with us (mind you, the students were dressed WAY more sharply than we were - a couple were wearing suits and I was wearing jeans. Thank God I didn't wear these). When I asked him why he wanted a picture, he said, "I can see you two on TV someday, famous when this thing gets big." To which I responded, "If this petition and youth movement gets big, it will be YOU on the TV talking, not us. Our leaders want to hear from you, today's students, and not us!"
So let that be a standing offer. As our petition gets out there next fall, we'll be looking for students who want to be at the forefront of the movement, who will run petition drives themselves, get the word out to their friends to run drives at their school and tell their friends... and who will speak in front of the nation when we deliver our petition to our leaders with the following demand: make our education a national priority.