Adults Are The Problem In Public Education

If I have learned anything in my 34 years in public education it is that almost 100% of the issues that cause a child to not be a successful learner can be traced back to one or more adults. Let's work on some easy examples:

-A child continually acts up in class despite conferences with parent(s).

Cause(s) could be:

-Parent doesn't have strong parenting skills due to early ages pregnancy or being poorly raised her/himself

-Parent had a bad school experience as a child and projects that on the current school. Tends to protect the child despite repeated offenses at school

-Child comes from single parent/abusive/neglect home and is filling the void with destructive behavior

-Child needs mental health support yet the school and/or the parent(s) don't act on the cry for help by getting professional help

-Teacher has poor classroom management skills

-Teacher doesn't know how to foster positive relationships with children or parents

Adult Issues!

Okay, let's do another one.

First year teacher is struggling with classroom management. She's allowed to continue struggling because:

-The campus administrator(s) is/are not effective in supporting new teachers

-The mentor teacher assigned is not following the mentor schedule and is not supporting his/her mentee

-Teacher team members are not supporting their new team member

-The new teacher is not a self-starter and is not being proactive in either asking for more support or researching classroom management technician his/her own

All of these examples impacts student achievement and all are adult driven issues. 

Let's do a harder one!

Student achievement across the country has not improved, especially in reading, over decades of accountability testing. Yet we continue to have high stakes testing, despite growing discontentment with the way we overtest children and despite growing evidence that it's not leading to student success. Whose at fault? Can't blame the schools; they would love to lower the testing burden!

Who are the adults to blame here? 

There are plenty we could point to... legislators, testing company lobbyists, test prep publishing companies and their lobbyists. 

All of these examples are known to be problems in the school world. Yet we still hear statements like:

-Johnny just doesn't want to learn

-I've tried everything I know to do but Maria just won't behave/listen/be kind/stop bullying/stop talking back

-Why can't some of my kinder kids come to school on time!

-Shaniqua says she hates school. She needs to grow up!

-I taught them what they need to know. They just don't want to learn it

-If they would just come in reading on grade level I could teach them something...

-If they would only come in speaking English...

-Leon comes to school with dirty clothes and usually smelly. What is his problem?

Adults who say these type of phrases are not getting the point about the support our children need. If a child is exhibiting behavior that is keeping them from being a respectful, engaged member of the class, the root cause can almost always be shown to be due to an adult issue. Whether ineffective parents, teachers, campus administrators, or beyond, all the way to our state and federal Capitols, adults are usually the problem when it comes to student learning. 

Imagine the culture change in a school if all the adults in it understood and accepted the fact that when a child doesn't learn, it can be traced back to an adult issue that has impeded that learning. And then do something about it so that obstacle is removed. Mind blowing!

How can we get our school stakeholder adults to own this problem?