TEAMWORK

Five Pillars of the Community

Schools are under fire for their performance as measured by achievement testing. Recent legislation has attempted to make schools more accountable for achievement and enacted standards for "qualified teachers." Testing and preparing students for testing to measure achievement seems to be a full-time job and is critical for schools in terms of funding. But, what happens when students refuse to learn?
Highly qualified teachers, modern environments, new technology and innovative curricula won't mean much if students don't want to participate. And the problem for teachers is that a small percentage of students who reject learning will consume a large part of classroom time and disrupt the progress of other students. So, refusing to learn isn't just a personal choice because it affects everyone and teachers are graded on how well everyone performs.
Refusing to learn is not solely a school problem: it belongs to the community. For example, there's sufficient evidence that involved parents make a significant difference in their children's focus and discipline at school. But, if those parents are consumed by work because it is necessary to work multiple jobs to pay bills, it's hard to be involved. Lack of parental involvement is a community problem.
The Five Pillars of the Community are: Education, Religion, Commerce, Politics and Social. Each of these pieces of the community are needed to push students forward and create achievement. School boards may be an obvious choice for creating this kind of dialog, but boards are elected by communities and don't always have the suggested representation. An independent board may work, but there would need to be a sense of urgency to convene decision-makers and get them to attend regularly.
Unfortunately, it is easier for community leaders to point fingers and push the blame on schools, teachers and standards. Instead of working together for a solution, community leaders will insist on getting tougher. But schools can't accomplish success alone. They only have students for 180 days -- that's less than one-half of the entire year. On an hourly basis, they only have students for about 1260 hours, not counting early dismissals or late starts due to weather. There's 8760 hours in a year, hence, schools only interact with students for 14% of any given year. So the community and parents need to take responsibility for 86% of time not spent in school. That means commerce needs to plan internships and work experience opportunities. Religion needs to heavily promote activities that build moral values and social responsibilities. Politicians need to provide a reason for students to study by creating meaningful work opportunities. And finally, there needs to be social outlets that allow people of all ages to interact and be role models.
Schools will never have the resources are to overcome a community's indifference to creating a learning environment. Until the community embraces the importance of learning, there won't be much to cheer about when achievement scores are released.