Ep. 51 "Is Public School Best for Your Child?" - Guest Terrye Seckinger (Part 2 of 2)

ADAMS: Then of course there’s the homeschool space: a lot of families prefer to educate kids at home. My experience is that homeschoolers either are exceptional or if the parents don’t do a good job and aren’t diligent, then it’s a total failure. 

SECKINGER: I agree. 

ADAMS: So again, it’s the responsibility side of things. But for those parents who are engaged and diligent and really put the effort into it, the results can be phenomenal in the development of their children. 

SECKINGER: They can.

ADAMS: But that certainly is the goal, and if they’re not able to do that, then responsibility would say put them someplace that can. 

SECKINGER: Well, I think there are other options too. Here I am in state-ed policy,  I would be so intimidated to homeschool. But there are great curriculums online—they’re very rigorous…

ADAMS: Yep. 

SECKINGER: ...and so if your student is a self-motivated, self-driven individual, I mean, that would be fine. Parents know their children best. 

ADAMS: Yeah. 

SECKINGER: They know what’s suited best for them. Most states have a homeschooling law—what about group schooling? Where you might hire  one or two teachers to teach various subject areas to maybe 5, 6, 8, or 10 children. Those group schoolings are starting to crop up under the guise of homeschooling. 

And then the charter schools—charter schools have many different flavors. And some charter schools are online, so that’s another option. 

ADAMS: So you brought out some important things. I think a lot of homeschool parents and families have hooked into these groups of homeschoolers where they have specialists who are content specialists, curriculum specialists, subject matter specialists that actually work with their students; it also gives them social connections and so forth and I think that’s been a very healthy development in the homeschool space. 

And you talked about some of the different crossover, but there are some states that allow students—regardless of where they are or what system they’re in—the public school system allows students to come in for, say, math, science, music, sports, or whatever. 

But because those people are citizens in that state, they have the right to that public education, even if they are not enrolling that student in as a full-time student—that student still has the right to take coursework wherever they need it. And I know there are some states that allow that, some states do not. What are our thoughts on that?

SECKINGER: You know, the public pays for public education. I think it’s time we kinda open our minds and opportunities to meet the needs of parents and families, and I don’t have a problem with that at all! If you have a child that excels in music and loves the cello–you know, most parents don’t know how to play the cello and can instruct their child, they might not have a music teacher in the area that does except the one at the local highschool. And so the schools were formulated to serve the people  and to provide an education. 

ADAMS: Yep. 

SECKINGER: Well let’s do that! Another issue with athletes, I had a family full of athletes and I was one of them myself—the high school leagues didn’t want charter schools’ students to participate in football or basketball or whatever. 

That’s absurd! What are we here for? We’re not here to guard and manage our shop. We’re here to serve our children! And so it’s time that we had fluidity  between the opportunities that we have in education. 

And let parents have their children soar with their strengths. And when we do that, we will always come out better. You know, when people are involved in music, it stimulates the brain in different ways.

ADAMS: Yes it does. 

SECKINGER: Athletics are the same! It really does enhance your ability to concentrate, to learn, to do, and to be successful. So let’s let children soar with their strengths. If it means a charter school that focuses—we have rural charter schools that are STEM schools, they’re elongated-day STEM schools. These are really rural schools, that are STEM schools. How great is that? 

ADAMS: Yeah. 

SECKINGER: Just because you come from a rural area and nobody in your family has ever been to college—y’know, there are a lot of people, I have to tell you, that aren’t going to send their children to college because they’re concerned about what they’re being taught in college. 

You know, let’s let children soar with their strengths and give them an opportunity to have an array of options that will allow them to do that. 

ADAMS: At the Noah Webster Educational Foundation, we focus on promoting Core Principles and Best Practices around the roles of Instruction, Parents, Government, Faith and Morality, and Facilities. Do you have any specific thoughts you’d like to share on these points?

SECKINGER: Wow. That’s a big one. I think teachers need to understand, and we need to all be in agreement, that men are moral agents. They have the ability to learn, they have the ability to understand right and wrong, and they need to be treated with dignity. And that sets the attitude or the atmosphere of the classroom. 

And teachers need to understand that all students can learn. Everyone can learn; even students with disabilities can learn. Because God has made us with incredible brain power to be able to do that to whatever acumen He has given us. And so He uses education as an instrument to better each individual. So when you’re in a classroom, you’ve got acumens that are an array of acumen. 

But each child has the opportunity to improve. So to treat that child as an individual is very important. And also to give them the tools as opposed to—what we tend to, in education today, dictate education, you know? We’re reading a book and ok, you’ve got that; let’s move on to the next page. That’s not education. That’s information. 

We need to develop life-long learners. We need to help children realize that they can learn on their own. Teachers should consider the unique quality—as we educate our children—the unique qualities children have and applaud those qualities and try and develop those qualities.  It doesn’t take a lot, but it just takes a little bit of study on each individual in your class because they’re all different. 

And realize that they all know right from wrong. They all know when they're being lazy. They all know when they’re hitting it on all four cylinders and doing the right thing. They all know when they're not interested in the topic. Let students really focus and soar with topics that they’re interested in. 

ADAMS: Okay. So let me just  push back for a second, if I may. So I’m hearing you, and as I was listening to you—because you were talking about “teachers ought to”—I think the vast majority of teachers that are out there, and teachers that are listening, would agree with probably or most everything that you said. 

That’s their heart, that’s their passion. They’re in this career because that’s who they are and…

SECKINGER: They’re called to it. 

ADAMS: Yes, that’s correct. 

SECKINGER: A good teacher’s called to teach, yes. 

ADAMS: Yes. However, I think most of them would say, That’s what we want to do; however our system, through mandates and this and that, has got us so locked down and in a box. So the people, who are the policy people,  need to fix things in the system so that we can do our job. So what do you say to that?

SECKINGER: I would agree with them! I would agree with them. The system is so bogged down with driven policy, I don’t see how anyone can perform their teaching job. We need to let teachers soar with their strengths, just like we need to let students soar with their strengths. But this is the problem, Melvin. When you have a “one system fits everything” … 

ADAMS: Yeah. 

SECKINGER: …you’re trying to policy down every single thing and you can’t do that. We need to diversify our system. And that’s what charter schools do. We need more charter schools. We need math and science schools, we need computer schools …  

I appreciate the teachers that are in the classrooms today.  And from being on the state board of education, there is so much required of them, it is impossible. So, why not have a charter system? Where you don’t have all that corrupt requirement and the schools are performing better? So see, we need to lighten up on our teachers and let them soar with their strengths and diversify our system. 

ADAMS: As we kinda wrap it up: based on your experience and your commitment to improve education in this country, what would you say to parents, to educators, and to legislators? Since, in some respects, they are the primary stakeholders and influencers in what happens in education

SEKINGER: Those are big, important issues. What I would say to parents is:  it is your responsibility to educate your child. You know your child better than anyone else. Don’t go along with the neighbors and stick your child in a public school if they have an acumen to do something else. 

Explore. Be vested in the educational offerings that are available to you and exercise that for your child. It will mean a different trajectory in life for them.  So parents need to recapture, as opposed to “The next door neighbors have their child in public school, everybody has a child in public school, my child will go to public school…” 

Everybody is different, so parents need to be on the watch in terms of … because the public schools of today, as you and I have discussed, are not the public schools we went to. So parents need to be very aware and they’re responsible for their children’s education. 

And you can go to charter schools, you can go to online schools, the offerings are greater  than they were when we were in school, and they should be greater still in the future. So that’s what I would say… to assume that responsibility is the best thing you can do for your child. Because to instill a love of learning in your child will set them on a course that is unimaginable. 

ADAMS: Yep. 

SECKINGER: And parents need to do that. Parents love their children; don’t let your school do that. Your teacher doesn’t love your child like you do. And so that’s what parents need to do. Be for their child and give them the best opportunity possible. 

For educators, I would say I’m sorry for all the regulation you have to deal with. I can’t imagine how you do it on a daily basis, I really don’t. But I think we in education have slipped from educating to indoctrinating, and we need to stop that like yesterday. Because indoctrination is #1) it is not education. #2) It's not beneficial. #3) It does not instill a love of learning. And so it is what I would consider a failure. And so we don’t need to do that. 

I want to tell teachers out there that your jobs are secure because teachers are at a premium, so just lead your class. Just lead your class. And you will be fine  because we cannot find teachers to fill classrooms, so we’re honored to have you in the classroom, soar with your strengths. 

ADAMS: Good input. 

SECKINGER: With administrators of the school: make sure that your textbooks are not indoctrinative, but instructive. Let’s forget the indoctrination. Let’s give people the respect that they are due—that they are people who can think through things themselves. 

Our job in K12 education is to give them the basics of learning and a love of learning so that they can continue on—whether it’s college or trade school or work. 

We need to reorganize what our mission is and how we’re going to accomplish that mission.  And really, let the teachers soar with their strengths. And I have great respect for a teacher who’s in front of the class—a class of 25 children who are all different! I mean, to impart knowledge to each of them is very hard. So that’s what I would do on the teacher's side. 

On the legislative side…  this is a big thing. I would break the monopoly of education. And I would do that by letting —this is one very simple thing—educational dollars that you and I pay for in our respective states, follow the child. 

Take your state and local money (because the feds bring money too) and give that in a self education savings account to the parent for enrollment wherever the parent deems a child should go. 

Public, private, disability school, charter school, whatever they want to do. Because they know their child best. This will quickly, Melvin, bring parents back into the education sector … 

ADAMS: Yes, it definitely will. 

SECKINGER: It would break our monopoly, and it would enable children to soar with their strengths. And it would cost no additional money. So it would also create competition in the public schools—and I gotta tell ya, some of these black families that we dealt with on the charter board,  some of these families would drive 50 miles a day to send their child to a better school. 

And so, this will create competition in the public schools. You know, you create an enrollment period, which is first come, first serve: when the school’s full, it’s full. 38 states, like I say, have charter schools, there’s a charter school option. 

It creates choice in public schools and so those low-performing schools, those low enrollment schools, in the 38 states that have charter schools should become charter schools. Because charter schools have a track record of good attendance, good results, and low teacher turnover. 

They’re successful schools! They’re schools with accountability that have to make gains. Our public schools don’t have to make gains. 

If lawmakers want to improve education, that’s what we need to do: let the money follow the child because you know what? Parents know best about where their children should go and they understand what children want to learn. 

We’ll have less juvenile crime, we’ll have more learning going on in school, we’ll have retention in school. Teachers will be happier in school—and that’s why I said earlier [that] it would be wonderful if we could flip the traditional system and the charter system. 

Make traditional schools charter schools (which is basically deregulating them), having a board per school, and let the charter schools be the traditional system that’s more regulated for students that might need more regulation—which is not many! 

And so the government complains about the lack of parental involvement, well they’ve boxed us out! 

ADAMS: Yeah, that’s true. 

SECKINGER: We need a seismic shift, and seismic shift should come where government breaks up their monopoly, because it hasn’t worked, and where parents re-engage with multiple opportunities so that they can go where their child sees fit to go. 

ADAMS: Wow. 

SECKINGER: So that’s pretty easy, I think. 

ADAMS: The Noah Webster Educational Foundation is working hard to bring solutions to our problems. We are all about core principles in education  and best practices in education. We focus on the 5 areas that we’ve mentioned before: the role of instruction, the role of parents, the role of government, the role of faith and morality, and the role of facilities  in education. 

Our website is nwef.org, and on that website you can find a lot there, particularly under—if you go to the Core Principles section, there’s a drop-down and you can learn about each of those areas in a succinct way. 

There’s a short video there that really helps people grab ahold of some of the core concepts  that we believe are best practices and things that we need to be working toward. 

There’s a blog that we have and you can get that blog right on the main website, and connections to all kinds of content, information, news, discussion, and interviews and things to help inform parents and educators and lawmakers. 

That’s our goal, and I believe that all of us working together—listen, all of us  want better for our children and for our country; we’re patriots, and sometimes we have different perspectives—that ok, we’re not asking everybody to be in total agreement, that’ll never happen. 

But what we do want is let’s agree on ways we can make things better, and let’s get it done for the good of all. So that’s what we’re about and we welcome people to connect… go to our website and check things out and let's work together to get this done. 

Terrye, thank you for your time today, for sharing out of your experience and your expertise, and God bless you. 

SECKINGER: Melvin, it’s been a joy and privilege and I so appreciate the work of the Noah Webster Foundation. You all are on the cutting edge of helping this system really fine-tune itself, change, and really serve the people of our country today. And I can’t say enough about the work that you are doing, and it’s just a privilege and an honor to be with you today. So thank you so much. 

ADAMS: Thank you.