Education 2.0

Its time to seriously reform education in the United States

Rates of graduation have been on the decline. Students are unprepared for college and life in general. The rating of the education system in the United States has gone from #1 to #23 in 50 years. It’s time to reform the education system.

There was an excellent article in a new magazine called Pacific Standard about education. Unfortunately, it is unavailable online but the basic gist of the article is this: testing does not improve student outcomes. We should only test to improve instruction. Basing school performance off of standardized tests is not helpful. I would go one step further and say that individual student achievement, aggregated together should be used to evaluate teachers. If a student arrived at the 4th grade reading at the 1st grade level and they are up to the 3rd they will not do well on a standardized test and we have no way to measure that tremendous improvement in performance for that student. Instead, we slap that student down with poor test scores and punish the hard working teacher for having a poorly performing students. Counterintuitive? I certainly think so. This system is not working and it’s time for reform. I’ve identified some other areas in which I think American education could use some reform.

Common Core and Tracking

The best part I love about Common Core is that American education (in many states) is finally getting standardized. American education, for the country’s entire history until now, has been a wild west of local controls that has led to various outcomes based on where students live. To really take advantage of Common Core, America needs to adopt a german-style tracking system. The german system roughly is this: the hauptschuler, the realschuler, and the Gymnasium. Basically low-skill, medium skill, and high skill (university) tracking. The parents and students determine the track they choose and they can change if the student changes and the parents agree. Not all kids need to go to college and many won’t or will go and drop out. Those students need not be sentenced to a life of poor employment prospects. Students should be given the breadth and depth of schooling and employment options available to them without thinking that without college they are failures. Building those skills through some light tracking will help.

Building skills for the future

Rather than simply reinforcing the same information over and over again education should focus on creating skills and creating good citizens for tomorrow. Does everyone need to take algebra? Does everyone need to take calculus? I think not. Its time to think about what skills kids want to develop. Even if they don’t decide on a specific career they can have marketable skills with which to embark into the world. That is the value of education beyond just the basics.

Improve schools themselves

One of the best ways to make learning actually work and make sense to the pupils is to make schools better themselves. Administrators can do a variety of things from gender based classes to better buildings or adjusting the schedule to a later time to work with growing childhood brains and bodies. Teachers should be empowered with the tools, materials, and individual classroom budgets to get what they need for every child.  If the learning environment is quality then teachers can do what they do best: teach.

Information infrastructure

In the past building quality libraries with the best books was the best way to provide the resources that would power learning. Now, we don’t need to invest in all those paper and shelves, although they remain important. The type of technology we need now is laptops/tablets and a home internet connection. Which then begs the question, Why aren’t we giving out laptops with internet connections? The Internet is as important as books for research purposes, socialization purposes, as well as enriching the learning environment and helping parents, teachers and students stay on the same page. In the same way, a school website should be as important as their building as a capital project. I recently was working on a project that required me to talk to some schools. The websites varied wildly from consistent, district-ran, affairs to wix.com websites that provided little resources. Schools need to create effective community online and offline for parents, teachers, and students. This could even be a space for Facebook to provide some unique solutions to school districts.

The Bottom Line

With just a few changes in the dollars we spend and the people we have in place we can make a positive impact in the education of the students of tomorrow. The hardest part about making these changes is that teachers’ unions and politicians tend toward stasis rather than doing the dramatic changes necessary to create positive educational outcomes in America’s children. Sadly, I think the 21st century is going to be very cruel to the U.S. if we don’t do something about education quickly.