Education is Like the Weather

One of Mark Twain's great lines was "everybody complains about the weather but no one does anything about it." The same can be said for education. It is a cure a day. If you read Education Week or any of the online sources, you will find a myriad of articles for and against everything to No Child Left Behind to teacher pay to home schooling. The fact of the matter is that now 25 years after "A Nation at Risk" was published, we are still at risk and going lower. Too many of our children can't read, too many drop out of school, and too many just don't go. One fact that hasn't changed in these 25 years: children who are behind or at-risk from the beginning have a hard time catching up. So what is the remedy? Interventions before the problem gets unmanageable. Jay Mathews has written a wonderful column about a book that profiles schools that work. This is more than a pre-K program, this is more than Reading First, this is more than a bunch of tests. Our commitment to education has to do with parents having decent jobs, children living in safe neighborhoods, and schools having the resources they need to meet the needs. We can tinker around the edges all we want to but in the end this is an interrelated set of challenges that must be met. Where so we start? Every child in our community has a book in his or her home that is age-appropriate and someone to read it to or with him or her. If that is a family member--great-- if not, then that is great too. US Airways and Reading is Fundamental's partnership "Read with Kids" is a great first step. In other words, someone has got to step up. Let's do this first and then go on to the next step.