Educational Improvements in the V.I.

Any parent with more than one child knows that all children are unique individuals with traits, tendencies, likes and dislikes of their own. For that matter we all know that each individual should be valued. Thus it should be no surprise that in education there are numerous correct and successful methods to maximize student learning.

It is imperative that a community has more than one successful education method or school to facilitate the teaching of all its members. The span of education techniques and philosophies is indeed impressive. Years of dedicated research and efforts by talented teachers have created numerous methods to achieve student learning. The challenge is to develop and to sustain many methods in a community and to match each student with the most appropriate learning method or school.

Many of us know of students that "failed" in one school and "excelled" at another. Whether it was because of a different environment, student learning method, or teachers, some students perform better in different schools.

It is not as simple as one school is better than another.  Instead it is a matter of what program best matches the child’s unique personality, home environment, DNA, culture, and other traits and conditions. Yet it is also a function of a school's and family's commitment to identify a student’s best learning method.

I say all of the above to emphasize our need to support, enhance, and improve as many schools in the V.I. as possible; not just a select few. In my previous article, I wrote that one commonality between South Korea and Finland was to educate ALL their residents and not only a portion of their country. The same principle should be promoted in the V.I., whereby the community should help numerous schools improve and facilitate the student learning of ALL.

Do not think "help" merely means money. Many times what is needed to improve is not just money but an array of other items from focus to philosophy to conviction to leadership to implementation of a growth mindset to parental support to vision to...

Of course, investing money wisely cannot be overlooked.

The price of improving as many schools as possible is that schools which do not maximize their effort, nor student learning methods and overall performance, will disappear from the educational landscape.