DREAM CITY 2020: Ideal city invests in education

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first in a series of columns about the future of the Pikes Peak region written by community leaders and visionaries. It's part of the ongoing community initiative Dream City: Vision 2020.

In many ways envisioning the future of public education in Colorado Springs requires a look at the dreams and goals of past generations: a free and equal public education for all students; a society and government that invests heavily in the education of its children and, thus, its future; and an education system that produces informed, responsible citizens who are able to compete in a national (and now international) marketplace.

Those were big goals and dreams from an earlier time. We don't need any bigger goals - for they have not been accomplished.

Some progress notwithstanding, like the child who struggles with learning a particular math concept, we stand the chance of regressing or losing our hard-fought gains if we don't sustain our effort. Furthermore, advances in technology, increasing economic globalization and greater income disparity are putting the earlier dreams further out of reach for many communities across America.

Let us, then, first envision equality of educational resources for the children who live in Colorado Springs. All children, including those in high-poverty areas, would have easy access at all times to computers, the Internet, a wireless environment, online textbooks, and educational software at home or at nearby libraries or other facilities in order to do their homework or research.

Children who speak English as their second language or who have special needs (autism, dyslexia, speech pathologies, etc.) would have the services and resources needed to help them catch up, keep up or reach their individual potentials.

Let us envision, too, a community in which the schools are filled with the best and brightest teachers in the land. The city and community would figure out a way to ensure that the average teacher is paid on a par with other degree-holding professionals. The teachers would be highly trained, highly skilled, adaptable in a 21st-century learning environment, and they would get results. Schools and districts would hold themselves accountable, remediating or removing teachers and administrators who do not meet high performance standards. They would also hold themselves accountable for modernizing the curriculum so that graduates would be able to compete in a global marketplace.

Finally, let us envision a city in which everyone takes some responsibility for educating our youths and for promoting a learning environment. We could become the city that promotes and supports good parenting. We could become a city that promotes reading and literacy at all ages. We could become the city that collaborates and arrives at some consensus about what students should know and do in the year 2020. We could become a city that promotes healthful eating and physical activity for children because we know they affect academic achievement.

In short, we could become that once and future city - the one it really takes to educate a child.

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WHAT'S YOUR VISION? Go to dreamcity2020.com and join the discussion.