As students returned from the Coronavirus crisis, the critical question became "What grade are they in?" Were they passed with their age group without actually learning? Were they retained, allowing the school-to-prison pipeline process to begin? Or did they sit in summer school while politicians pretended they were catching up? The lessons from the pandemic were clear. Not only does the system not work for them anymore, the system has not worked for Black and Brown students-as well as White students in Appalachia-for the last 200 years. In addition to structural changes, the reality is that high stakes standardized testing drives the curriculum into a narrow scope of education when the need is to educate children beyond the classroom into the world of today. A Failed System: Pandemic-Related Solutions to a 200-Year-Old Education Crisis presents solutions designed to develop a system of education that places all children on an even playing field. The current system has no solutions to the structural problem and shows no interest in taking students beyond the big test. It is time to replace education's failed system-students must be prepared to think!

On these pages is a call to action for teachers who have been shackled by the self-serving motives of agenda driven politicians. Here we present a new innovative process designed to prepare children to be productive members of their community. Students are empowered to take charge of their educational lives where thinking is valued above obedience, and their parents are respected as full partners in the process. The greatest challenge to educators in this decade is to prepare children to rise above the confirmation bias and embrace critical thinking. In this day of continuous propaganda from many directions, everything requires in depth thinking, research and processing. Change won't come from the top! The time has come to go underground to subvert the system from the bottom up. We infuse creative ideas while providing a pattern for systemic change that empowers teachers allowing them to take back their profession. Teachers are the saviors who are in the position to expand children's minds to the stars and beyond, giving them hope that they will make the world a better place. It is time to take a risk for children by subverting the system with the goal of true, whole child education.

In Eldon "Cap" Lee's new book, standards become guidelines for success rather than deadlines for failure as it is recognized that all children are unique, with different brains and different dreams. This leads to the reality that children are children, not branded on their foreheads for their differences but accepted within the wide range of skills and abilities present in all of us. Brainstorming Common Core: Challenging the Way We Think about Education includes ideas developed in the trenches by talking to and servicing parents, educators, and students for over fifty years. This book draws away from an artificial testing based education to one that teaches the whole child. As we brainstorm Common Core we see the necessity to empower children to chase their dreams and follow their pathway to success, parents to become full partners in the process, and educators to take back their profession.

In Eldon "Cap" Lee's new book, standards become guidelines for success rather than deadlines for failure as it is recognized that all children are unique, with different brains and different dreams. This leads to the reality that children are children, not branded on their foreheads for their differences but accepted within the wide range of skills and abilities present in all of us. Brainstorming Common Core: Challenging the Way We Think about Education includes ideas developed in the trenches by talking to and servicing parents, educators, and students for over fifty years. This book draws away from an artificial testing based education to one that teaches the whole child. As we brainstorm Common Core we see the necessity to empower children to chase their dreams and follow their pathway to success, parents to become full partners in the process, and educators to take back their profession.

Based on real experiences of those in the trenches, this book describes a new delivery system of education designed to allow all students to succeed with the help of teachers who are led by their passion to do what is right for students. Lee and Budsisz take the reader step-by-step through not only what is wrong with the system of education and what must be changed for education but what the school of the future must look like. Education's goal should be to make sure that students do more than maintain an existence in their adult lives_they must flourish, living life to the fullest. This detailed plan leaves no stone unturned in providing the tools to build a quality education program for all.