Full disclosure: I am a teacher. And many teachers I know, and many people whom I have heard talk about teachers, have a lot to stay about the topic of educational reform. Usually it is pitted against political leaders, partly for obvious reasons. Oftentimes the person with the purse strings has a lot to say about the performance of the executors of the task at hand, and likewise, those executors have a lot to say about the person with the purse strings. It can get nasty.

There really is not enough time and this post would become quite long with hundreds of subsequent posts if I were to unpack all the arguments, proposals, and policies circulating within legislative halls and governors’ offices. But here are some key observations, some of which can be found in the recommended articles in my previous post.

Political leaders and legislatures are, overall, unhappy with the results that are coming out of all the money they are releasing to be spent on education. Governor Andrew Cuomo, for example, cites stagnant, and in some cases, declining test scores as a reason new policies must be put in place to keep schools and teachers continually improving and held accountable.

The New York Times article I referred in my last post discusses certain aspects of Cuomo’s dream for education, as well the flaws in his argument. It doesn’t take an astute student of governmental policy to notice the standards have been changed twice in the past two years, which would affect any school district’s test scores. Nonetheless, Cuomo vows to withhold a lot of cash (here come the purse strings) if school districts do not adopt his recommendations. Here are some other recommendations he plans to enforce, as explained by New York City’s teachers’ union (UFT) president, Michael Mulgrew:

• Individual merit pay
• 50% student test scores on evaluations
• Extending probation from three to five years
• Eliminating teachers’ due process rights
• Allowing 100 new charters, which will be seeking to co-locate in our school buildings
• Putting low-performing schools into state receivership and empowering the receiver to abrogate members’ union rights in those schools
• Holding desperately needed school aid hostage to the above agenda

You can bet teachers are all in a tizzy. Some of this even gets me shaking my head. I mean it is notable that the Governor is looking to leave behind a legacy worthy of a presidential nomination (ahem), and education is a way to show it, but is this top-down approach the solution?

Let’s look at the unions, briefly. They have their solutions, too. And no, it is not just to pay the teachers more money. In general, their position is to decrease class size, provide more after-school programs, and of course, getting rid of the charter schools. We can all dream of those things, and while smaller classes would make for a more manageable workload, actually teaching 34 teenagers is not too bad of a problem. After-school programs are great, depending on what kind, and whether I have to do them or not, honestly (I don’t know about you other teachers, but I’m just worn out after a day of teaching). And charter schools? Really? Are they our greatest enemy? Only if we choose not to work alongside them, nor they, us. Politics.

So, are there any other ideas? Anyone see something left to re-form? Our leaders have got the teachers and the curriculum covered. The teachers addressed the classroom, enrichment, and, well, charter schools. What’s left? Parents? It’s laughable to think of legislating how parents ought to instill values. Well, not laughable I suppose since states are finding ways to experiment, including my home state. A new Tennessee law requires parents receiving welfare to attend at least two parent-teacher conferences a year. At least that’s an improvement from the previous idea of requiring welfare students to pass all their classes. But again, here we are legislating our way to a better education system. And this does nothing for those parents not on welfare. How do we get them to fix their kids?

Pardon the sarcasm, but it intensifies when faced with absurdity. Our focus in the media and in legislative halls (or outside them, as in the case of some picketers) seems to be on “reform” that seems to be little beyond legislating additional requirements into law or throwing more money at schools.

How do you get a child to learn and excel in life? How do you make education, and what it has come to represent in the 21st century, the silver bullet for poverty, inequality, ignorance and violence? How can education be a cure-all?

Media, politicians, and yes, many union leaders have overlooked the solution, perhaps because it has been seen as too complex, to expensive, infeasible, or, for some, undesirable. But it needs to be revisited and really unpacked. No, I do not have the solution, but like many teachers, parents, students, and some well-intentioned reformers, we know where the solution lies: in the students.

What should an education be for a child? Reading and writing? There are plenty of givens, and a plethora of things we all think should be taught, and how it should be taught. Now we emphasize the need to learn how to read and compute math. It is not enough that someone can actually do those things, they need to understand how and why they are able to do it. That is common core, in a simplified nutshell.

There’s nothing wrong with any of that, but there is a problem with all of us dreamers, bankrollers, and policy makers determining what a student should learn. A student is a young person, a future man or woman, and we have made it our responsibility to tell them what they need to know. Do you see where I am heading here?

What is missing is vision. While I have heard of legislatures creating laws that require teachers to teach a biased, more positive slant of US history, I have not seen a bill or law that requires us to help each child develop his or her vision and goals (If you know of some, please share them in the comments below). Now, there are schools and programs that help kids prepare for college, or research a career, but I am talking about a lot more than that. Many teachers, parents, and community leaders recognize that this needs to be an ongoing investment.

My previous post was meant to illustrate how that could possibly look. By instilling in a child the freedom and voice to help determine his or her own curriculum is a way to invest in a student’s vision and future. They hold the responsibility and ownership from day one. Do we need to do all of that for them? Well, yes, if it is our goal to indoctrinate them. But if we want a generation of men and women capable of solving their own problems and walking into the real world with some real confidence, then, no.

Our media, politicians (conservative and liberal), community leaders, school leaders, and teachers and parents need to shift conversations toward how we can help strengthen our children’s voices instead of silencing them in a flood of uniformity and mediocrity. I don’t know how to do that well, but I know it is important. And I know it is difficult to do in the current system. If a politician came around saying he or she wanted to completely dismantle the education system and build it up from scratch, with student voice being the cornerstone, they have my vote. We can work out how that looks together. But please, let’s not make another law dictating how to do it, unless you’re making one for each unique child.