Today, schooling has virtually taken over education. The discussion is narrowly defined: how to change schooling. We forget that children bring the seeds of their early and continuing success in school from their home and neighborhood.

The concern about teacher accountability is so great that what’s overlooked is the accountability of the family and the wider community outside the school walls. This is where children spend almost 90% of their time. We can change all the school assessments, but unless the issues of child poverty and health are addressed, we are re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

In education, almost everyone talks about evidence that particular programs and curricula work or don’t work. What is being looked is test score results. I support good test scores, but there is a growing trend, mistaken I believe, to think of education as a fairly narrow science.

If education is a science, then it is many sciences, not just one. We know so much more today than we used to know about the complexities of learning and teaching. We know about the importance of encouragement, about parental involvement, about student focus and motivation.

And yes, case studies from the MegaSkills® Program indicate that we can actually teach the resilient attitudes and behaviors that the little boy in “Slumdog” somehow, in this fairy tale, came to on his own. But we have make room in the school day and at home to teach these.

Our children to be successful and happy don’t need to become millionaires… but they need to know how to keep going to be the learners they need to be in the 21^st century. We know a lot about how to produce these results that include test scores but go well beyond-- and we can’t afford to go backwards.

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