2006 Virginia Public School Convocation Highlights

Dr. Cannaday talks about the importance of high expectations for all students and the evolution of Virginia’s standards for student achievement. “Not failure, but low aim was the sin.”

In Franklin County
What Dr. Benjamin Mays said was that it was “not failure but low aim was the sin.” And I am not talking about that we intended to hurt children. Our real issue was benign neglect.

In VDOE Studio
Dr. Benjamin Mays is the former president of Morehouse College and I think more importantly, he was president of the Atlanta school board. I think his quote, “not failure but low aim is a sin,” really reflects his first impressions about low expectations and what that means to children in the near term and also in the long term. In my messages I tried to help us reflect on what we have learned by setting low expectations for children and also what we have learned when we raised that bar and then supported children attempting to meet those expectations; what it leads to in terms of great possibilities for their futures.

In Franklin County
So we had disparity in rigor because our focus was we had to get everyone to finish at the same time, not how well, just finish at the same time.

In VDOE Studio
In the early 70s, what we tried to do then is that we tried to protect children from the world outside of school. We were concerned that every single child could not meet high expectations, so we set a very low bar so they could finish at the same time with their peers. That really resulted in disastrous implications for children: walking across the stage with a diploma that had no value. In the 80s, we learned from the 70s, and we began to raise the expectation but still it was too low; it was a middle school-elementary expectation in middle school. Finally, in the 90s we actually confronted the realities that if we really were serious about every child having a great future and great opportunity, we had to set expectations that were higher, minimally, at grade level for every child and work to be certain that each child met those expectations.