Public education must be supported and sustained.

Table of Contents

PPT Slide

Public education must be supported and sustained.

Education has never been more important than it is now.

Public schools have heroically responded to a rising flood of expectations over the last twentyñfive years.

Our present system of public education was designed for another age.

No school can make these changes without the understanding, trust, and permission, and support of the local community.

Continued public support of public education is not a given.

The time has come for every school district to organize a communityñwide conversation that results in a rebuilding of public trust, a clear understanding of what our students need, and a shared commitment to create schools that provide a high quality education for all.

Americaís public schools can be traced back to the year 1640. The Massachusetts Puritans established schools to:

The creators of these first schools assumed that families and churches bore the major responsibility for raising a child. The responsibility of the school was limited and focused. Americaís schools stayed focused for 260 years.

At the beginning of this century, society began to assign additional responsibilities to the schools. Politicians, business leaders, and policy makers began to see the schools as a logical site for the assimilation of newly arrived immigrants and the social engineering of the first generation of the Industrial Age. The trend of increasing the responsibilities of the public schools began then and has accelerated ever since.

From 1900 to 1910 we added

From 1920 to 1940 we added

In the 1950s we added

In the 1960s we added

In the 1970s the breakup of the American family accelerated, and we added

In the 1980s the flood gates open, and we added

the 1980s (continued)

And, finally, in the1990s we have added

What are the BASICSÖReally?

PPT Slide

Author: Jamie Vollmer translated to HTML by Eugene W. Hungate

Email: ghungate@hungate.org

Home Page: hungate.org/index.html

Download presentation source