Who's Failing?

There's plenty of rhetoric out there about failing schools, failing students and - to round things out - failing teachers. More often than not these three groups seem to be castigated for the 'alleged' failure of the American education system.

Yes, there are a good number of communities, schools, students, and families who face many hardships and have to overcome an abundance of hurdles. That very real dilemma should be a big part of the discussion about the issue of failure. Just as critical to this discussion is the very notion of failure and its many causes.

Does failure deal merely with standardized test scores for a school, subject matter or each child or does it have additional meanings? Failure has many connotations and it can thought of in a number of ways.

Allow me to interject this...if we are to examine the allegation that students, teachers and schools are failing then we had better examine a whole host of issues; such as, environmnet, expectations, the goal of education, the meaning/measure of failure and the role that society plays throughout.

Over the next few days I will be examining many of these issues and concerns.

Dick