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The Adventist educational system is the second largest private school system in the United States.
BY TOM KRAZAN
Profession of Faith and Adventist K-12 Education
February 2008
“It is a matter of great concern if a child, for what ever reason, is not at one of our schools.� the Empty Desk Prayer Initiative - Hawaii
deployed. As the length of this process unfolds into a longer time period than expected, the wisdom of original deployment often comes under question, leading to a slow collapse of the original response system mainly because it was never intended to be a long term management solution.
anything more would have been counter to a profession of faith.
A catastrophic event will mobilize enormous amounts of resources very quickly, such as Katrina. There is a rush of human reaction. The downside to this type of event is that there is little or no time for cohesive coordination or planning since this is mostly a reactive process. In the aftermath of this type of event, it is not uncommon to find many of the resources scattered and inefficiently
Adventism by faith anticipated becoming extinct rather quickly. The problem is we have not become extinct and by design our systems were never intended to last very long. As a result most of our current management systems are mostly stopgap in concept and subsequently are not of the same institutional solidness as the other large denominations. For
Was this the beginning of our end?
1980
Recent Adventist history reveals that about 45 years ago almost all new
We have lost 30% of our K-12 student enrollment in the Central California Conference since 1989. The problem is that this is not unique to Central California but is representative of the national trend since 1980. And this is occurring while Christian education is an industry that is in high demand.
The ultimate indicator of triumph will be when the Adventist educational system is driven by the expectations of parents who want their child to mature in a responsible Christian environment with a high demand on academic excellence. Our Adventist educational system should be measured by our increased count of productive Christian leaders entering into society with a desire for evangelistic mission. We should seek to graduate young men and women who are prepared to be successful lifetime learners and productive citizens with deep religious convictions.
church and school construction halted abruptly. Something specific to the Adventist faith must have happened to cause such a significant change in our physical development in North America. Unfortunately today, our congregation is still very reluctant to invest in American Adventist institutions based on the current performance record has it relates to enrollment and membership statistics. We do not have an inspiring trend. This has now become the chicken and the egg problem for us especially in the area of K-12 education. Senior church members are more convinced than ever that this new generation of young parents are the worst of the worst and all they want are worldly things and care nothing about the Sabbath. The problem with this point of view is that this quote is from 1928 suggesting nothing has really changed in the church leadership's opinion of the next generation. This becomes a significant problem especially in an aging church congregation that forgets they were that younger generation at one time. This total picture has had a profound effect on the development of the Adventist K-12 educational system and now threatens its future success. Studies by Gillespie and others have good indicators about our students and our teachers but the problem of value goes beyond that. Academic options and excellence are very important to today's parents, as were the World Book Encyclopedias to my generation. Most parents are still willing to spend what ever it takes to get the best for their children, especially in the area of education. However, Adventist K-12 schools generally do not compete very well regardless of the talent of the individual teachers. The bigger problem today is that in most markets we are not even close in a campus to campus comparison with the other private institutions when it comes to educational opportunity. And our customers, the parents, are making it very clear they know the difference by walking away from our system. The Adventist educational system is the second largest private school system in the United States. That statement is profoundly exciting and somewhat misleading at the same time. And it has to do with the simple word, “system.” If you take the religious component and
the HR resources out, our system strips down to little more than an accreditation association. Each school is locally owned and operated with little or no shared resources. Lodi Academy has little or nothing to do with Fresno Adventist Academy, and neither of which has anything to do with GEM Academy accept in the Adventist name only. We are more like a Best Western Motel Association than a Comfort Inn Franchise. There is a huge difference in the resource base and in the points of resource delivery. To the outside customer it may look the same but in terms of the business, it is not. Independent businesses (our model and a Best Western Motel) have a much higher failure potential than a franchise business. There is no comparison. At this point in time, this is what I am observing. There is a high demand for quality Christian education at least in all areas of the country that I have found information on. Those groups that want Christian education are usually willing and able to pay full tuition. There is a subgroup of parents without the financial ability that also want Christian education for their children. Other Christian educational institutions are finding ways to incorporate those less advantaged families into their system without bankrupting the whole thing. Home schooling has taken many Adventist parents (who have the ability to pay) away from our brick and mortar schools. These Adventist parents often use a product called A Beka Academy, a Christian non-Adventist home school product. In general and across the nation, Adventist Christian education is not considered a "good value" for the investment and many parents believe there are better alternative choices. What if we were free to think about the entire system? What ideas could it generate? Take a recently closed boarding school and reopen it as a specialty school for troubled kids of the rich and famous. Rich families will pay as much as $40,000 or more a year for their screwed up kids. There is big money in that specialty market and that income could be reinvested into general Adventist education nationwide. It would also promote our faith beyond the cult interest and into a Christian faith doing good for others.
Adventist schools develop educational content every day. Some teachers are better than others. Let’s capture that talent. Put a video cam in the hands of a teenager and let him or her post it toYouTube (or SpiritFlash) or live video stream to another campus using DimDim (that is a two way Internet interactive tool which is free). In fact there is a ton of stuff that is free at this moment and most of it works really nice! I use some of it in my business daily but we do not use any of it in our schools. Partner with 3ABN, or their satellite supplier. I believe there are 3 open channels on my box at home. This would be a low tech solution to deliver quality content to a small rural school for cheap using a common TV. Place a 3 page workbook and a one page quiz in a pdf format on the Internet and bingo, that teacher has her resources for that day's math class plus the quiz. Post all this stuff to IUniversity by Apple or what ever it is called. It’s free! Have the delivery of the content managed by the NAD (or the Union) and not by the originating math teacher in front of the camera. Let's engage the entire system of Adventist education truly into an educational system and not just a bunch of unrelated campuses stealing teachers from each other. Let the kids work the cameras and do the up-loading. They understand the terms bit-torrent, posting, text messaging, ripping, mashups, ITunes, etc. And if they don't, they surely know how to Google it. Most of our leaders don't even blog, much less email. If Donald Trump owned all this real estate, he would make lemonade out of our lemons. So put some of this stuff in the hands of our very creative young people and let Adventist education become an Evangelistic Mission again. Give the kids the rules and the boundaries for the project and I will guarantee you, they will solve the problem beyond our wildest dreams. Youth is simply the beginning of wisdom of the next generation. Educating our Adventist children needs to go beyond the single campus concept. And it needs to be better (or at least as good) as home school products. We need to leverage the social benefit, both
Now will our profession of faith also be our resolve to bring young families back into the church family with the help of the educational system? Because, it is the passion of youth that determines whether one becomes a pastor, a missionary, a doctor or a teacher in the Adventist faith.
by Tom Krazan Central California tomkrazan@gmail.com
we can, they are counting on it
I spoke with an architect that consults with faith based organizations. His comments were that the most successful educational systems have to rely on a certain component of external (nonconstituent) funding. He specifically mentioned the Jewish community and how advanced they are. He said, they plan on attracting at least 30% non-Jews to their schools to be able to fund the quality of institution they want to build. He also said by having an open campus, they are able to leverage and attract large amounts of non-Jewish corporate dollars to their educational institutions. He said their schools are great! What an interesting perspective.
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the immediate and life long, of having Adventist relationships that home schooling can not offer. We can only grow the faith into the future if we stick together as a religious group. That begins by looking at Adventist K-12 education from a franchise model and not as stand alone schools with the same name.
"Every human being, created in the image of God, is endowed with a power akin to that of the Creator - individuality, power to think and to do. The men in whom this power is developed are the men who bear responsibilities, who are leaders in enterprise, and who influence character. It is the work of true education to develop this power, to train the youth to be thinkers, and not mere reflectors of other man's thought." Ellen G. White