K12 Education has been called the “last bastion of the Industrial Age in the United States.” You may have some memory of the Industrial Age if you are an adult over the age of 30. Most of the goods that people purchased and used in their everyday life were manufactured in factories where workers spent hours producing the same part and passing it down the conveyor belt to the next person who added their part. The goods started as raw material at the beginning and came out at the end with everything looking pretty much the same except for color. Adjustments were made for quantity of sizes. This took very little mental acumen of the workers except for the designers, just numbing physical repetition.

Industrial manufacturing of goods left the USA in the 80’s. Labor cost in other countries was a fraction of minimum labor wages stateside so production was outsourced. Many suggested that manufacturing would never return to our shores but it is. Only the return is marked by the impact of high tech robotics that very precisely cut and assembles individual components to unique patterns as ordered. No more mass production. Size, colors, and designs can be tailored to the desire of the buyer with incredible speed and amazingly low expense. However, the skill requirements of the manufacturing worker are vastly different. Each worker must have a strong academic preparation, a thorough knowledge of technology, know how to get along well with others, and is encouraged to be creative.

K12 Education can be compared to industrial manufacturing plants of old because we take students into Kindergarten as “raw material,” run each child through the scope and sequence of curriculum designed for each grade level, and set graduation standards that are the same for each child who comes out the end, hopefully after only 13 years. To be fair, there is some adjustment toward the end of the assembly. Children who have difficulty conforming to the industrial model can settle the minimum expectations of a “standard” rather than an “advanced” diploma if they are willing to go forgo the opportunity for higher education with the deceived notion that they will find a job instead. How does an industrial model promote the excellence of craftsman quality?

This plan for K12 education may have worked when industrial manufacturing was responsible for the employment of a large percentage of the US Citizenry. It doesn’t work in preparing for students for the jobs and careers today. The bigger issue though is that children are not raw material to be “manufactured” to a specific mold. Each child has very unique gifts and talents, learning styles and development needs that should be identified and challenged to excellence. The assembly line model applied to curriculum and test year after year is a broken process that needs to be fixed. The good news is that it can be fixed. Research in cognitive development, child psychology, brain theory, and appropriate use of educational technologies can be applied to each child’s needs today just like advanced robotics and technologies are applied to advanced manufacturing and have brought opportunities for jobs back to the USA. This will require considerable application of the educational technologies, advanced training for teachers to make them educational craftsmen, support of parents and caregivers to accept change in “the way things are done,” and considerable partnership and investment with business and industry. The longer we wait to make these changes the larger we will find the pool of high school graduates that are not prepared for college or career.

Governor McDonnell has apparently recognized the need to move k12 schools from an industrial manufacturing model to one appropriate for the communications based, academically challenging, creativity-generating, globally competitive world our children are facing. He is pushing K12 reform that is focused on expectations of academic excellence unique and appropriate for each child rather than minimum standards for groups of children. He is reaching out to business and local communities for input and support rather than propitiating the idea that government should be solely responsible for the education process. Additionally, and appropriately, our Virginia Chamber of Commerce is devoting considerable focus on the priority of K12 education reform as well in its Legislative Agenda. I encourage each member of the Chamber to take a good look at the Education Component of the Legislative Agenda and contact your legislator to be support these initiatives with us.