Every politician that runs a campaign has a plank in their platform about education or education reform. They have it because it is necessary. The vast majority of voters have an interest in education – either their own or that of their offspring. We have decided as a nation that education is our path to better careers, higher income, and higher living standards. We have invested the responsibility for most of that in our state and local governments.
If you go back before world war I, this was still true – as soon as there was a community with enough kids, they would hire a school master or mistress and erect a school to help make their community literate. Students learned in one room schools together throughout elementary school. But as families flocked to urban centers, one room schools seemed to not answer the needs of our increasingly industrial society. Schools became more about preparing students for life in an increasingly industrial and corporate environment.
Recently, it seems that we have so invested in a public education system that parents have abrogated their own responsibility for educating their kids. This attitude, while certainly not universal, does not help the students who grow up in a home where the parents don’t take much responsibility. I have talked to teachers who bitterly complained about how as kids grow older, parents stop coming to school conferences perhaps only attending student performances or sporting events. The parental attitude toward the responsibility to educate their children is perhaps the greatest risk factor that a student faces, because it informs their own attitude.
Many people like to complain about the recent transition from a mostly merit based school grade progression system, towards a more egalitarian grade progression system – designed to be more encouraging and esteem based rather than performance based. I think the grades system of uniform annual progression is ridiculous anyway. But in order to have a system that doesn’t appear to “punish” students with genuinely reduced capacity, we have invented this fiction and we are stuck with it. We assign grades which indicate a continuum from excellence or failure – not a students potential and his genuine attempt to work up to his assessed potential. We don’t appropriately distinguish in our grading scale between students who slack off and those who work with vigor and keep trying with courage when they don’t succeed.
In my experience, I would rather hire someone who struggled in school (lower grades) who worked hard for B’s, C’s and D’s than someone who easily achieved higher marks without effort. The capacity to succeed in life is often more dependent on work ethic than ultimate capacity, and without a reasonable work ethic, even those with extraordinary capacity – will not achieve much. Yet at the same time, history is full of examples of individuals with what turned out to be tremendous capacity, being poor students, even failing out of school.
What is interesting to me is that so much of the debate around education is about content. What should our children learn? What do they need to know to succeed in life? So little emphasis is placed on capacity. What should they be able to accomplish? What decisions should they be prepared to make? I think that this is a fundamental problem. But how can we prepare students to accomplish, or to make decisions? How can we help them grow their capacity?
It’s not what you know that is most important, but how you understand. Its not some set of facts that are critical, but how you use those facts to make decisions. The fact is that not all students are created equal. They each learn differently, and express affinity for different content. Yet all of our standards, all of our diagnostics and measurements are “standardized” and “non-diversified”. Since we know that each student is different, do any of our measurements actually have the ability to predict future successes?
In measuring an individuals capacity to do work at any job. Elliott Jaques explains that it is not the routine repeatable actions that differentiate among workers. It is the capacity to make decisions in time. That the capacity for human endeavor can be measured through observation, as Time Span of Discretion, or how far into the future can an individual successfully make decisions. Moreover, that this capacity is not “fixed”, but continues to develop throughout each individuals life into and beyond middle age, accounting for the tremendous later life drive and productivity we see in some of the most brilliant and outstanding members of our society.
This notion of Time Span of Discretion, to me, forms a notion around an individual’s capacity is more closely related to critical thinking, and the ability to see the future consequences of this moments decisions. The development of critical thinking is not and for the most part has not been a primary objective of elementary or secondary education. We have continued to focus on “literacy” but I think without a meaningful purpose – for example that our society would become literate with a view to participating in social, cultural, political and economic decisions.
Getting a job, is not the ultimate purpose for education, getting a job is simply one decision point in each individual’s personal economic and social participation. When viewed through that lens, our almost complete association with education as a means of economic development, seems somehow lopsided, or distorted.
Every politician has something to say about education, especially the cost and funding of education. It is clear, say all of them that teachers are underpaid and administrators are overpaid. But why do we say this, yet do nothing about it. Let’s use Time Span of Discretion as a lens through which we can examine these statements.
The average starting salary for teachers was <$35k in 2011 according to industry sources. This is comparable to a staff supervisor in many industries – a first level manager. And this makes sense, as the Time Span of Discretion for the roles is within the same strata – between 3 months to 1 year. It is different than other “professions” with greater technical proficiency requirements like engineering, accounting, or nursing – where starting salaries of individual contributors are actually higher than that of supervisors in other industries. Some of this is because of resource supply and demand premiums, but also, the actual capacity (time span of discretion) required of individual practitioners in these fields is actually greater than that of level one managers in other fields.
As for school administrators; Principals and Superintendents and the like, the time span of discretion required to execute these roles is 5 and 10 years respectively, being responsible for staffing and facilities maintenance, as well as curriculum developments and budgeting, that individual teachers or even department leads are not. So when we say that these administrators are not deserving of compensation that is similar to a corporate executive with the same budgetary and staff and time span of discretion requirements, its nonsense. Why wouldn’t they be compensated like that.
Politicians also complain about the tenure system and the teacher’s unions. I think tenure is a bad idea, and should be replaced with a more merit based pay system so that better teachers can be compensated without having to move to administrative roles or take on more administrative duties. Keep the best teachers in the classrooms – that is important. Moreover, teachers that are not effective in the classroom should not be difficult to eliminate. Sorry – that is my belief. Teachers unions exist because of the tenure system. Tenure exists because of the unions – unions are not necessary if you have a merit based pay system.
So after this analysis, what is my proposal? I have these ideas to offer:
Competitive programs should be funded at the discretion of the community, not using co-mingled funds (tax dollars):
2) Taxpayers shouldn’t fund competitive academic or arts programs, but basic arts (music, art, drama, etc) should be part of every school’s curriculum. All competitive academic or arts programs should be funded directly by the community.
3) Let the community coalesce and decide how they are going to fund interscholastic competitive programs.
Replace the teachers union with a guild structure like the American Bar Association that qualifies its own members:
2) Let the guild bear the responsibility states now bear to qualify teachers and to administer tests.
3) Let the state penalize the guild for poor performing teachers and for poor qualifications.
Replace the tenure system with a more graduated merit pay system so that teachers can be compensated for their capacity.
2) Teachers should have variable compensation based on additional administrative duties assumed in addition to classroom.
3) Teachers should have merit compensation based on student performance as measured independently.
4) Teachers should have variable compensation using grade level and subject premiums.
5) Regular classroom teachers should be augmented in upper grades with industry professionals to augment teachers knowledge of current practices, especially in occupational and technological courses.
6) Advanced degrees in education should only apply to administrative roles, classroom teachers should only benefit (compensation) from advanced subject degrees.
Require communities as invested in the school boards to allocate funding within district to fine arts, college prep or occupational programing.
2) Local communities should determine whether advanced placement courses are offered in secondary schools and how to fund them.
3) Local communities should determine whether and to what degree fine arts programs are offered and how they are funded.
4) These decisions should be public and made with adequate hearing.
5) We all understand that there is not enough funding to do everything everywhere. We always will have to make difficult choices.
6) Districts that do not offer specific occupational, college prep, or fine arts program should be required to allow their students to move their funding to a school that offers the program they seek, either within or outside the district.
Change grading and testing and progression protocols to be more adaptive to student capacity.
2) Adopt a progression protocol that allows students to select and follow individual “tracks” to graduation, rather than progressing through grades in phalanx.
3) Adopt testing standards that are designed more to measure learning capacity, and critical thinking skills as lead measures of individual capacity.
4) Measure teacher performance based at least partly on students improved capacity year on year, rather than absolute grade benchmarks.
Change college entry and financial aid criteria to reflect capacity and content standards, relative to student academic pursuits and economic demand metrics.
2) Students who don’t declare majors have higher standards applied than those who choose a pursuit.
3) Admission to a major for state university is determined by state employment demand within that field.
4) Limit student loans to students who are pursuing educational goals that will ultimately allow them to pay back loans.
Change college degree entry criteria to reflect market demand, and longevity?
2) For students changing majors, understand the reason (failing out of other discipline) and ensure that students are not simply allowed to incur debt that cannot be re-payed. We do these students a disservice.
3) Admission to degree programs must be limited by the job market, especially access to financial aid must be governed by economic demand.
Require schools (secondary and college) who graduate individuals directly into the work force to work with regional employers to provide internship opportunities for all such programs they provide.
2) Employers need opportunities to understand the quality of degree candidates from the schools.
3) Schools need direct feedback from the employment market about their programs and students.
Give control of large metropolitan districts back to local school boards.
2) The cost management advantages large school districts offer are offset by heavy administrative overhead. This is unnecessary.
3) Adding bureaucracy to larger district structures takes money that could simply be spent on teachers and students.
Remove national and statewide educational mandates, and allow communities to drive curriculum.
2) Eliminate broader mandates which are not funded to “twist” school districts into unnatural states of affairs.
3) Prevent the politicizing of education – let it remain a community matter.
4) Let state or national education agencies provide education “accreditation” or “report cards” for local school districts – but let the local board resolve the issues, rather than penalizing poor performing schools financially.
I don’t have any real plans to execute these ideas, they are just ideas. But here are many more ideas than I have heard any candidate for state or national office propose as ways to fix problems with our educational system. I am sick and tired of all candidates saying that we need to fix education but not proposing any non-financial solution or even describing what the problems are.
I would love to hear your ideas, or any criticisms of mine. I don’t know if any if these ideas can be implemented or if they would be effective – but some ideas are better than none.