Big Problems in K-12 Schools

We need a revolutionary change! Public education in the United States of America is in big trouble. Our children are not learning what they need to learn. According to global assessments, they have fallen behind children in many other countries. In 2018, our fifteen-year-old students ranked behind thirty other countries in mathematics.  National learning assessments show that fewer and fewer of our children can read and do math at their grade level.  Parents became aware of classroom realities during the COVID Pandemic.  Efforts to have a voice in what was happening in their children’s classrooms were met with seemingly insurmountable barriers.

Changing our outdated educational structures will take all of us, working together, regardless of our professional affiliations and political views. 

But how?  No one has offered a systemic change that will benefit all students.  Instead, we hear, “Get out now! Take your children to private and charter schools or keep them home and school them yourself!”  This non-solution will ultimately create even more heartbreaking division between the haves and the have-nots. Let’s create a system that works for all!

Competency-Based Learning and Promotion (CBLP) is the change we need in public education.  Simply explained, students move on to the next level of learning once they have mastered the current level. Our children will immediately grasp this concept if they have ever played a video game where they level up.  

All children, including foster children, English-language learners, low income families, and others who lack the means to leave public schools, are the reason we must change and improve the system. None of us will benefit from further dividing our country. Instead of giving up on our failing schools, let’s bring out a new way of running public education – a new system that challenges students to learn and move up at their own pace with teachers and parents helping to coach them along. 

Children do not learn at the same speed, and individuals do not learn every subject in the same way or with the same ease.  Some children quickly master music, some are natural athletes, and some are artists. Most children easily learn in more than one subject, but some children struggle in seemingly every subject.  Since we know these simple facts, why do our schools continue to hold students back or push them ahead regardless of individual student strengths or needs?   This locked-in approach has been failing for many years and it is well beyond the time to change our systems.

Working together, we can gain the support of our lawmakers, neighbors, friends, and educators.

Spread the word!