5
invitation of former Iowa State Superintendent of
Schools Dr. William Lepley back in the 1980s.
Because of the ice cream company’s growing fame,
Lepley recruited Vollmer to join the Iowa Business
and Education Roundtable, a group that included the
heads of such corporate giants as Alcoa and John
Deere. Vollmer -- he of a 50-employee company --
became the group’s executive director and later
formed his education advocacy firm,
Jamie Vollmer, Inc.
“I really had no intention of getting
so deeply involved. I got my sleeve
caught in the machine. It just may be
the most important enterprise of our
time,” said Vollmer, reflecting on his
past 30-plus years of writing and
talking about public education. One of
Vollmer’s books,
Schools Cannot Do It
Alone,
was cited as one of the top 10
education books of 2010.
Vollmer’s website prominently
displays this quote:
“Public education
is a miracle. And this is its most
hopeful time.”
“It’s not just hyperbole,” he said.
“What I mean by that quote is that we
have never been in this place before, where we are
required to do everything we can do to unfold the
potential in every student. It used to be that not every
student needed a degree to make a good living, but
that agro-industrial economy doesn’t exist anymore.
“We have reached a point where the moral
imperative and the practical need to educate every
child are now the same thing because our once
highly forgiving economy is gone.”
Vollmer said his message at the IASA
Conference will focus on harnessing the power
represented by the education leaders throughout the
state.
“The power of the people in that room and the
power of the people that they manage equal an army
that can alter public perception and reaction,” Vollmer
said. “There are all sorts of enemies to public
education. I was the living embodiment of that. It is
fitting that I will be talking in Springfield, Illinois,
because Abraham Lincoln had a great quote about
public sentiment back in 1858 during one of the
Lincoln-Douglas debates.
“Lincoln said, ‘…public sentiment is everything.
With it nothing can fail; without it nothing can
succeed. Consequently, he who molds public
sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes
or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and
decisions possible or impossible to be executed.’"
That is why Vollmer thinks the timing is critical for
educators – superintendents, faculty and staff alike --
to have positive, ongoing discussions
about public education, building
support one community at a time.
Vollmer’s talk at the conference
dovetails perfectly with IASA’s
“Vision 20/20” initiative to develop a
roadmap for public education in
Illinois.
“Like I said earlier, the moral and
practical have become the same
thing. Not only do people need to
know that supporting the local
schools is the right thing to do, they
need to know it’s the right thing for
them, too -- including the 75 percent
of taxpayers who don’t have children
in school,” Vollmer said. “When
communities support their schools,
good things start to happen in those communities…
property values go up, businesses are attracted,
people want to live in those types of communities.”
It is a perspective that Vollmer has gained from
visiting hundreds of schools. He probably cannot eat
blueberry ice cream without thinking about that
English teacher who helped mold his sentiment about
public education. He now says only one of his three
original assumptions remain: the need for change,
something schools cannot accomplish alone.
“We must change what, when, and how we teach
to give all children maximum opportunity to thrive in a
post-industrial society,” Vollmer said. “But educators
cannot do this alone; these changes can occur only
with the understanding, trust, permission and active
support of the surrounding community. For the most
important thing I have learned is that schools reflect
the attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities
they serve, and therefore, to improve public
education means more than changing our schools, it
means changing America.”
(Continued from page 4)
49th Annual IASA Conference
October 9—11, 2013
Click
o register or for
more information
From critic to supporter of public education ___________________________
“
We have
reached a
point
where the
moral imperative
and the practical
need to educate
every child are now
the same thing
because our once
highly forgiving
economy is gone.
”
—Jamie Vollmer
