Everyone freeze! Stop right where you are and look around. Survey the landscape. With all the clamoring and commotion in education, have you stopped to notice? Education transformation is already well underway. I know, I know. With all the posturing and politicking going on from your local school board to the state house to the White House, there's a public perception that it's business as usual. Voices of self-interest continue to tout the status quo. Advocates for the public interest continue to toe the bottom line. Amidst all the noise and distractions, education in 2013 can look and feel like more of the same.
As an institution, education is susceptible to the pitfalls and pratfalls of change: inertia, resistance, and gridlock. For many educators, the focus on standardization and accountability feels like roadblocks. For others, forces of globalization and techno-constructivism feel like progress. And all the while, budget cuts and reform backlashes tighten the vise grips on agri-industrial education. After decades of lip service about retro-fitting reforms on the existing model, nothing short of a societal sea change is raising it from its sedentary, sedimentary, seemingly cemented place at the core of civilization.
How? Families now run the gamut in how they look and operate. Information is now free and available