Is there such thing as a "safe" assumption?

As I sit at my final education conference of the year in Dallas, TX (charter schools), and look toward the final school board meeting of the year next week, seems a good time to think about some assumptions our society seems to hold where public education is concerned, and decide which - if any - I want to take with me into 2014.  Here are a few I can think of:

• Public education is working just fine.  I'm a product of public education, and look how good I turned out!
• It's a fact of life: some kids do well in school, some kids shuffle along, some kids fail.  It will always be this way.
• Teachers' job is to teach, kids' job is to learn. Period.
• Of course we want our kids to be life-long learners - except for during the summer, when they can take a break from all that learning.
• "Batch processing" is the best way we know to educate kids.  Group them by age, herd them into classrooms, get them facing forward, give them a lecture, send them home with homework, do it all over again the next day. And if they can handle that reasonably well, we'll advance them together to the next grade level next year.
• It's natural for kids to "hate" school!  Who wouldn't?

So I know an eleven-year old who is kinda just "shuffling along."  On school days he plops in front of tv in the morning until it's time to go to school; when he gets home from school, he plops himself in front of tv again (no, he's not watching PBS).  But on a recent snow day he was up early, dressed, and out the door.  We didn't see him again until dinner time, and when he came home he had $40 in his hand and a grin ear-to-ear.  So really, what made that day SOO much different than the rest?

Success did.  He knew he could get up, hustle, and come home with the ultimate measure of tangible success - MONEY!  And seeking that feeling of success will get him up early everytime.

So my resolution for 2014, as I consider which - if any - of the assumptions above that we should really hold dear, is to see that each and every kid who crosses the threshhold of Wharton schools gets to experience that feeling of success every day - even if it's just a little bit.  Any ideas?