Charles Maxwell

In the past several weeks my mind has been spinning around this fundamental question – what is education today? In other words, what should teachers be teaching in order to prepare students for the real world? What changes do schools, districts, state and private agencies need to make to support teachers in this fundamental goal? As I have talked to students, my fellow teachers, and teachers in other schools, I wonder if anybody really knows the answer to this question. We have the Common Core – controversial as it may be – that has identified key learnings for 21st century students. A new bill has recently passed congressional committee approval that would replace No Child Left Behind and give states more control over determining the goals and priorities of their schools.

But I wonder if all of this is good enough. It seems to me that the best judge of what students need to learn is the classroom teacher. This is the person who knows students the best. Yet, we cannot have every teacher determine different learning outcomes as this would lead to chaos. In my opinion, more teachers need to be a part of the professional community that is making decisions for schools. PLCs play such a vital role in this and schools that have them, such as my own, seem to have some of the best teacher input into policies and procedures. To me the “common core” is the classroom teacher who has the best interest of students in mind. This is where education policy should start.

Thoughts?