What are some of the numbers? Here in the state of New Jersey for example, in the city of Asbury Park 100% of the schools in Asbury Park, New Jersey have been termed and defined as chronically failing! One hundred percent! Not one-out-of but 100% of all the schools in Asbury Park, New Jersey are chronically failing our students. If you look at the city of Camden 97% of the schools in Camden, New Jersey have been termed and defined as chronically failing our students and both of these areas are areas where our children, children of African-American decent, children of Hispanic decent are predominant, and we are the ones who are mostly being victimized. This must stop! It must stop.

I served in one of my previous lives as the President of the Board of Education in Washington, D.C., and one of the things I’m very clear about is our children can learn. They can learn. They have innate potential; they have innate genius; they have innate intelligence; they are brilliant, and I have never come across a student that cannot learn. But, I have come across many adults who cannot teach and often times those two things come together, and they come together disproportionally  amongst our children in our communities.  It must stop! Further, my background in medicine is pediatrics.  I happen to be a pediatrician so that children had been my focus both professionally and avocationally for a long time. One of the things we know in pediatrics is that no two children learn alike. Children are different…not better than…or worst than…just different. They are different. They learn at different paces; they learn at different rates; they do things at different rates; they do things in different ways because they are different. Not even identical twins do things the same way all the time and yet when they come into the school systems they’re asked to do things at the same level, at the same pace, in the same way as many other children who come from different parts of the city, different parts of the world,  different parts of the country, different races, different ethnic groups, different cultural backgrounds – this is a formula for disaster. And my background in education and pediatrics tells me we have got to change this. There’s got to be a solution that’s more flexible, that effectively educates, that efficiently educates everybody’s children. Not just white American children but African-American children, Hispanic-American children, Asian-American children, Indian-American children,  the whole spectrum, all children can learn. The challenge is for the systems we have setup to be more flexible, to be more credible and more culturally competent and racially competent and be effective at delivering our young people the knowledge that we know that they need to be successful in the information based economy. And so it’s time to take action! It’s time to take action.  It’s time for us to go to work.

We believe we have a solution and we want your input on this; we want your feedback.  We’d like your reaction to these thoughts and as time marches on we’ll be talking more about what that solution is. Give us your feedback.  Talk back to us. Respond to what we’re saying as we go down this road together and create solutions that will make a difference for our young people such that we won’t loose any of the human capital that this nation is currently loosing. Because in the final analysis and at the bottom-line  the human capital of any nation is where its wealth is. It’s not in the ground. It’s not in the air. It’s not in the machines it’s in the human beings, and if we fail to mine the genius and the intelligence in all of our children we are making a decision to give up on the wealthiest part of our existence as a nation.

Help us. Speak to us. Talk to us. You’ll hear more from us.

Thank you very much for reading this commentary.

I want to say a word about our children and their education. We are experiencing a national tragedy. It’s one that ought to have everybody up in arms.