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Anyone interested in the local education scene who didn’t attend the Education Summit here Oct. 9 & 10 missed at least two good speeches and a lot of discussion, formal and informal. Those who did attend are probably coming up for air right now after taking part in what was one of the largest, hopefully one of the most important, gatherings in the Richmond-Wayne County community.

What I’m tempted to do is tell you some of the best ideas that came out of the Summit, but I think it’s best to wait for two developments: One is the condensations of all the ideas, prepared by the Learning Corporation, and the other is personal feedback from those who were there. Anyone reading this, whether you were at the Summit or not, is invited to submit their reactions on the Summit or any other ideas on local education we should be talking about. Also, there is a daily paper in town that I’m sure will welcome your contributions.

All I’m going to put out right now is the bare outlines on the two-day event. Maybe some of you want to know who organized it. O.K., the “Who” was (or were) the Wayne County Foundation and the Richmond-Wayne County Chamber of Commerce, plus something called the Learning Corporation. Neither the Foundation or the Chamber is officially “authorized” to run events like this (and I’ll talk with you about that some other time) but suffice it to say that the Education Summit would never have happened if the Foundation had not taken the lead (”Take the bull by the horns,” we used to say) and got it done. The Wednesday program was headed up by Suzanne Derongowski, Chamber vice-president and director of the Chamber’s Business Education Liaison. The Learning Corporation is something that was recommended five years ago as part of the Report on local education by Ames McGuinness of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (quite a title, eh? known by its acronym N-CHEMS) and again, the Foundation and Chamber went ahead (without anyone “authorizing” them to do so) and arranged for setting up the Learning Corporation, which is a group of representative citizens from all parts of Wayne County.

So much for explanations. (This part is getting too long.) Briefly, the two-day get-together started Tuesday evening at Earlham College’s Goddard Hall with Earlham President Doug Bennett welcoming a mix of educators and townies. The feature speaker was Suzanne Morse, who has a bio as long as your arm, but we’ll simmer it down to the latest item: She is president of the Pew Partnership for Civic Change, and her latest book is Smart Communities: How Citizens and Local Leaders Can Build a Brighter Future. Wednesday’s section went from 8:00 a.m. to about 1 p.m., with the kickoff speech by McGuinness, who essentially told us the difference between what he found five years ago and what the scene is now in our educational performance. Some of the changes are good. The rest of the morning was spent in “break-out” sessions, with small groups concentrating on each of the five “Leaks” in our education pipeline. You don’t know where the leaks are? O.K. Here they are: 1) Kindergarten Readiness, 2) Grade 3 Reading Level, 3) Ready for High School, 4) Post-secondary Transition, and 5) Continuous Learning. Each point is a “Leak” where we lose kids, eventually we lose them as dropouts. These “break-outs” were the real payoffs, down-to-earth stuff in which everyone was personally involved. The groups came up with some good ideas, which I hope, somehow, will be publicized in the near future.

Well — FINALLY — we’re at the end of the Introduction, and we come to the part you probably didn’t anticipate. If anybody out there read or remembers the original “Introduction” when this web site first opened, I said I was going to write anything I pleased, whether anybody wanted to read it or not. That’s where we are now. At the Education Summit’s Tuesday night session I was asked to say a few things (mostly because nobody else wanted to) about the general background for our current education situation. As you might imagine, it took me awhile to put together those remarks, and it occurred to me since then that some of you didn’t hear them and might like to read them. So, instead of giving them a decent burial, they are added after this paragraph. One thing I’ve learned about this web site business is that it doesn’t cost anymore to dump a big heap of stuff on the blog than it does if you quit when you should. The following is my personal view on…

Where We Are in Education in Richmond-Wayne County

The first question to ask is: Why are we here? One reason we all seem to agree on is that we are NOT here to hold another education meeting. I suggest that we are here, simply, to mark this day as the day we start to take education seriously. And if I may borrow from the book, Smart Communities, by our speaker tonight, I suggest that we can be guided by her essential theme, namely: Recognize Your Deficits But Build on Your Strengths. This could very well be the framework of our action program from this day forward, our mantra: Recognize our Deficits but Build on Our Strengths.

Many persons remain in denial about any deficits in education. All they want is happy talk, and if there are any deficits they are not their fault. Others go the other extreme and won’t stop talking about the problems. If that’s all they want to do, they might as well go home. We have to stop using problems as the answer. As to our strengths, does anyone here not believe Richmond and Wayne County have strengths? If you don’t believe we have strengths, you might as well go home, too.

Well, let’s start with the problems, but only to set the mark where we are, not as the answer. Those of us who have lived here awhile have always been sure we have one of the best levels of education you can find anywhere, and in some ways, we still do. Then along came our friend, Aims McGuinness and what we now know as the NCHEMS Report and Pow!, he burst our balloon. All he really said was, “Here are the facts.” And I won’t repeat all of them, but what they amounted to was this conclusion: For those things that can be measured in K-12 education, Richmond-Wayne County is below the average of other districts in Eastern Indiana. Eastern Indiana is below the state average, and Indiana is below the national average. Is that bad enough? There are lots of reasons why – and this is where we often start using problems as the answer. Finding out why is important, but what we are going to do about it is most important. As a community, one way to confront this challenge is simply to ask: If other communities are better, why aren’t we? and what are we going to do about it? That’s why we’re here. We can find out what the problems are – that’s easy. The only subject worth talking about is: What are we going to do about it?

Let’s talk a minute about strengths. What happened to the strengths we thought we had? Richmond and Wayne county have always had one of the strongest support systems for good education. Have we squandered our educational heritage? Have we forgotten the names of those who made us proud – David Worth Dennis, Joseph Moore, N.C. Heironimus, inventor of the junior high school system, Will Earhart, organizer of the first high school orchestra in the United States, Joseph Maddy, another great musical educator, artists like John Bundy and McGuire Hall, the only art gallery connected with a high school in the United States. Have we forgotten them? And many others? Where has gone the pride?

Why do we put a million dollars every year into our economic development agency without allocating a single dollar to workforce education – in spite of the fact we are told that workforce education should be our No 1 economic development priority? Why are we satisfied with chasing $10-an-hour jobs and burst with pride over being the Powerball capital of the world, (even though Ohio folks always win it). Of course, we need jobs, and Ten Dollars an hour can look good to anyone without a job or anyone who has an $8-an-hour job. We need jobs and we welcome new industry. But is that the level at which we want to remain? $10 an hour adds up to about $20,000 a year – and that’s the official poverty level for a family of 4. Is that what our education system should strive for? The NCHEMS Report says we are currently educating our young people to be clerks and truck drivers. Is that the education level that brings those high paying jobs everyone talks about? Yes, you may reply, we want to aim higher, but we have a chicken-and-egg standoff here. Even if we train our young people for high-paying jobs, they won’t stay here, because we don’t have any high-paying jobs for them. That’s right, there are no guarantees. But I can guarantee you one thing: If we don’t have a well-educated work force – and a reputation for having one here – I can guarantee you we won’t attract industry that needs and provides high-paying jobs.

So what is our goal for education? Isn’t it to raise the entire level of education here, from birth to adulthood? To raise it to what we have always thought it was, and beyond? To raise it until we’re the best, or among the best? I sometimes remind people that Richmond-Wayne County has no seashores or mountains. Nor are we part of the high-tech corridor in Indiana from Lafayette to Indianapolis to Bloomington. Nor will we be. Isn’t education the one thing we control? Isn’t the best education – and a reputation for having it – the best hope for our future – for our children and our community?

I suggest that the goal of the best education is not a choice but an imperative, and this is the time, the pivotal point in time to really begin taking education seriously. It’s time to shift gears. All I’ve said is not meant to denigrate the many fine efforts already taking place. We have a lot of good people doing a lot of good things, but we need to get our act together and move ahead with purpose. Doesn’t it seem we spend a lot of time, energy and money trying to fix things that should not have gone wrong in the first place? Let’s be willing to tackle some of the root causes, the tough issues, so we get better results, especially in education. Frankly, we have trouble biting the bullet to get the job done.

Pursuing that thought, I hope this conference will concentrate on beginning to develop programs with measurable results, rather than just talking about problems. It’s time to leave our common theme of “We’re working on it” or “We’re going to try a new program.” It’s time for a commitment to the goal of “What do we have to do to solve the problem” and the attitude of “Whatever it takes.” That’s why the Wayne County Foundation and the Learning Corporation have suggested that every proposal that comes out of Wednesday’s break-out sessions examining the “Leaks” in our educational journey be subjected to the four-part test, which is: Where are we now? What is our goal? How can we reach the goal? How will we measure our progress? After all, how do you know if you’re getting anywhere if you can’t measure results? Plus a nice one to throw in extra is: What is the most important thing to do first? If we can discipline ourselves in this way, and follow through, we should begin making real progress. Of course, to make any plan effective, so it doesn’t get lost in a heap of good intentions, we must set a series of reviews on a timeline. I believe the Learning Corporation has already planned to have public reviews following our present conference — after three months, six months and one year. Do you think we can hold to that?

Just one other comment. I have often said that what we have here is not an education problem but rather a community problem – and I’ve been criticized for saying so. What I mean by that is that we can assume the educators are committed to improvement – at least I believe that. The difference is how much the community supports these goals. That’s means the rest of us. Education is a many-splendored thing, and all education does not take place inside the classroom. Our future all comes down to attitude, and our progress toward the best education in all its respects depends on community attitude. How important do we really believe it is to put Education First? Or are we a community that is Satisfied with Mediocrity? If we are, that’s what we’ll get. If we want the best, and are willing to work for it, our chances for the best are much better. Communities that insist on the best education get the best education. Which kind are we?

– Vic Jose

Vic Jose :: Oct.11.2007 :: Uncategorized ::

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