To bring success to the American Educational System requires a rigorous non-political and non-union in- depth study lasting two to three years˳ Such a study needs to be done globally, state by state, town by town, city by city, and school system by school system˳ There are no overnight fixes, getting rid of teachers, pouring more money into the system doesn’t solve the problems˳ Certainly, creating school systems within schools systems with relative little supervision compounds the issues˳ Standardized testing does nothing other than cost the local school systems millions and millions of dollars˳ Going electronic does not insure success˳ What then, is the real challenge?
The challenge is to identify, honestly, the specific areas of failure˳ To do this America must be open, to envision how it can assure a higher level of student success in its schools, and hopefully, assure their chances of becoming productive citizens˳ Can we, as a nation, do this? We can and we must˳
We need to make sure that we do not continue to spend time on unproven experimentation, change in school organization patterns, inadequate teacher preparation, and poorly constructed teacher-evaluation tools˳ The avoid the pitfall of repetition, the following process is recommended˳
• Prioritize that which is most important in the continuation of our culture˳ (What are schools supposed to do?)
• Analyze the failure of those aspects of the education system that have denied the achievement of the prioritized list˳ (Why don’t students learn to read and to read with comprehension?)
• Recommend solutions that are long-range with built-in cyclic re-evaluation˳
• Prioritize again with emphasis on those areas within the educational community that are most important to work on˳
An excellent example of the use of failure analysis comes to us from NTSB˳ Whenever an airplane crashes every aspect of the involved plane, pilots, ground crews, service, fuel, weather, and mechanics receive painstaking analysis˳ Piece by piece the parts are examined˳ It is this type of scrutiny the American Educational System must undergo if achievable solutions are the goal˳
What is the fundamental road block to this approach? It’s our social system˳ As a society, we discourage this kind of painstaking examination˳ No one likes to be put under the microscope˳ No one likes to admit failure˳ We, as a nation, have a definite mind-set to put mistakes behind us, to move on˳ Move on? To what? More failures?
Norman W Wilson, PhD
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