Preparing our Children for the Future

By Lee Fisher

The Fisher Coleman Education Agenda prepares our children for the future by rebuilding Ohio's school system from preschool to beyond college. The Agenda achieves this by getting back to the basics and focusing on the ABC's: Accountability, Basic Skills, Values and Safety; and Community Partnerships.

We must rebuild our school system from preschool to beyond college to create a continuum of lifelong learning. Every child must graduate high school with proven, core skills that are world class. Every graduate must be prepared to enter the world of work or the world of higher education. It will not be easy, but it is critical.

In July 1997, in a speech to the Ohio State University College of Education, Lee Fisher laid out an education agenda that focuses on children, on learning, on standards, and on results. Lee endorsed the BEST Coalition's education proposals and went beyond their recommendations. He called for an emphasis on the basics, and a focus on the ABCs: Accountability, Basic skills, values and safety, and Community partnerships. This issue paper incorporates the recommendations of BEST, Lee's additional recommendations, and other substantive ideas from around the state and around the nation.

Lee Fisher and Michael Coleman know that money alone cannot make a child study or a school succeed. That's why the Fisher/Coleman Action Agenda puts children first. We will move Ohio to the head of the class by focusing on accountability, basics and community.

Ultimately, education is about empowering our children with the skills and values, first to survive, and then to thrive in a global economy that demands the best. We provide the guidance and instruction - but we can't do the work for our children. That's up to them.

We're more convinced than ever that all our challenges - crime, welfare, and economic growth - have at their root the same common sense solution - raising children who are loved and well-educated, and developing and training the God-given potential of Ohio's citizens. We also know and respect the limits of government - state legislatures and local schools don't raise families - parents do.

We must all share in the responsibility to give our kids both roots and wings. We don't start where mom and dad end - it's a journey together on a lifelong road of learning.

We must rebuild a system that was well-intentioned, but, in many ways, is badly broken - and recognize that while funding that system must be mainly a state responsibility - making sure it works is a shared local responsibility of parents, teachers, educators, the community - and, most of all, the students.