Creating Educational Access, Equity, and Opportunity for All

Louis Sullivan, an American architect, was referred to as the "father of modernism" and coined the phrase "form follows function.” His phrase provides a key insight into the state of public education in America. The existing form for public education is industrial in nature and is not a match for what should be the function of an education system in an information age society—one that is characterized by technology, globalism, a new definition of work, and rapid, relentless change.This book explains how the mismatch between function and form is creating circumstances that are putting the future of public education at risk, leading to system dysfunction, deregulation, and privatization. Public education needs to be redesigned and reformatted to match the function of the age in which we now live. The current structure and function denies too many students the levels of access, equity, and opportunity that their parents once enjoyed. Achieving that outcome is important to the economic, social, and political wellbeing of America. 

Everette Surgenor’s new book titled Creating Educational Access, Equity and Opportunity For All presents a compelling vision for the future of education. Surgenor’s vision, however, cannot become reality unless there are thousands of educators with the courage, passion, and vision to take action to transform their school systems. They will need courage to face the adversity they will face as those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo fiercely resist their efforts to transform—and they will resist because their entire careers and their sources of substantial funds are anchored to the Industrial-Age paradigm. They will need passion to give them the emotional and physical energy to “stay in the fight” in the face of the adversity, in spite of the odds, and despite efforts of politicians to continue funding education within the existing paradigm. And, of course, they will need a vision—like Surgenor’s—that will serve as their “North Star” to guide them toward the dream that so many of us share for a new way of educating our children.

Everette W. Surgenor practiced as an educator at the school and district level for thirty plus years. He works as a consultant, author, and chairman of a community broadband initiative.