Thank you Madison County! As part of the Campaign for the Common Good's goal to cut by half the number of young people who drop out of high school by 2018, United Way continues to listen to everyday Americans to find out what they think about education.
On March 31, 2011, United Way Worldwide brought people together for the national Virtual Education Town Hall to reflect back the voices of Americans and discuss the implications of what we heard. This conversation was a perfect complement to the community conversations already happening in Madison County through the Schools Foundations's Speak Up initiative.
The formal findings were released in the United Way Worldwide Voices for the Common Good: America Speaks out on Education report.
Key themes in the report identify concerns within the U.S. education system including:
- Safety and security. There is a sense that if we cannot create a safe and stable environment for kids, nothing we do will help them ultimately achieve success.
- Communities of faith must be part of the solution. The answers to education cannot come from schools alone. Parents, caregivers and even people who don’t have kids are saying schools are not solely responsible for children’s success. Other institutions where values are taught and modeled have to step up and be part of the effort.
- People across all demographic lines, from all walks of life, believe we are failing our children. People see education as the key to success and believe children will be successful only if the entire community wraps its arms around them.
- Children need role models just as much as they need academic support. We cannot solely focus on academics at the expense of nurturing the whole child.
To read the report in its entirety, clickvisit liveunited.org by clicking here (the report is embedded in the blog).