The National Board of Governors assemble at the White House last week while still captive of a new sense of urgency created by one of its fellows, a former licensed educator, Governor Chris Gregoire of Washington-state. Governor Gregoire urges in her public policy campaign for the support of all U.S. governors to support college-educated youth and adults. This means as well that “all” stakeholders in education need to support k-20 learner in their preparation to complete their educations and get degreed to compete in the new knowledge driven economy.
According to Governor Gregoire says (http://www.nga.org/Files/pdf/10GREGOIREBROCHURE.PDF , “approximately two-thirds of all jobs will require a quality higher education credential or degree. For nearly all Americans, the new path to the middle class runs through college; however, our public institutions are not producing enough college graduates to meet workforce needs.”
Our governors today must shepherd Washington’s budget; our local economies and the complex solutions involving remedies to public health care, energy, public safety, environment while predicating a vision for the future that truly leaves no willing learners behind and exempt from earning potential. Willing or unwilling learners must be prepared by professionals to be independent and capable of competing for a livable wage with knowledge-workers from across the globe and right at the doorsteps of their own main streets and corporate business centers.
With teacher layoffs, school closings, school failures and student drop-out rates escalating for a myriad of reasons — all of us — must make this campaign more than rhetoric by insuring that we employ a Zero Tolerance for anonymity surrounding our youth. No One is Anonymous as far as school-aged-children are concerned to our “paid-service” teachers, youth development infrastructure. No One is Anonymous to needed volunteers and other surrogate support systems. No One is after all Anonymous — in a real community!
For neighborhood schooling New Rochelle had that kind of mantra and demanded that kind of mettal think of Jim Gaddy,Leonard Paduano, Anne Williams, Dave Cromwell, Mary Ellen Forte, Joe Soprano, Gertrude Schwartz, Pete Rubin,Dr. LaRuth Gray, Edna Carew,Mrs. Sol, Ms. B. Whitehead, Sandra Abramson,Linda Kelly, Lou Amonson? Further, Dr. Richard Organisciak and family served the New York Department of Education revolutionizing it in some ways with situational leadership directing the “alternative educational programming” in the middle and high schools in the largest school system in the nation. He had many innovative programs 8-Plus Learning Academies, special theme-based satellite learning centers, initiating Americas’ Choice and Performance Standard models; “productive learning” projects with international school systems so New Rochelle is in good hands when all mettal join stakeholder-forces for a practical learning continuum.
When all youth are addressed as “community-assets” and not as strangers, the children we need to complete our organized education processes and Common Core Performance Standards will be in a condition and ready for the possibility to being nurtured. They will then learn social, academic, ethical, cognitive skills and the acquired appreciation of the humanities and the lifestyles and cultural appetites of those we want them to emulate.
Existing programs at schools, faith-based programs, parents-teacher organizations and even newly developed initiatives must be renewed by this mantra articulated by Governor Gregoire. Her message must be more than words. She says we will be three million college degrees short by 2018 to meet the demands of our own job market. We need as much vigilance in this cause as we lend our vigilance and funds to the-priority-wars on other lands. This “complete to compete” is unquestionably understood by American schooled, Libyans, Japanese and Haitians and must be a shared-vision for all of our nation’s youth.