US Public Ed Like GM in the 80s

My Pontiac Bonneville was big and fast. In 1984 I interrupted a string of European and Japanese cars to give GM a try. After the Iranian hostage crisis buying a Pontiac felt patriotic. The experiment was short lived. I missed the German driving and dealer experience. With the first sign of trouble, I sold the car and will likely never buy an American car again.

A lot of upper middle class parents feel the same way about US public education -- they left and they're never coming back. Lower income families usually don't have that choice -- they're stuck with a neighborhood public school that you and I wouldn't send our kids to. Public education is GM in the 1980s -- it's dying and doesn't know it.

You may think your local school is ok, but I spent the week in Newark, Bed-Stuy and Los Angeles. We have an urban school crisis. And, if you read Tony Wagner's new book, The Global Achievement Gap, you'll understand that most suburban schools aren't preparing kids for the future they'll inherit.

The US won't spend or reform its way to high and equitable educational attainment. The basic model of age cohorts slogging through print-based content with ability tracking (i.e., race and income tracking) is obsolete, expensive and unjust.

The confluence of nearly ubiquitous broadband, cheap access devices and powerful application platforms have transformed nearly every sector of society except learning. The lack of public and private investment in research and development is a function of a locally controlled inefficient public delivery system. We now have the potential for students worldwide to learn more, faster, and cheaper. And innovation is the key.

Specific problems that an aggressive innovation agenda will address include:

• Personalization: why can Apple suggest iTunes to your teen but we're not smarter about suggesting how to learn physics? We won't dramatically change learning productivity until we dramatically personalize learning.

• Smart tests: key to personalizing learning is adaptive testing incorporated into learning activities. Computer games do it, schools should too.

• Motivation: some families, neighborhoods (and nations) lack the strong cultural press that encourages some students to endure challenging (and boring) content. A sophisticated approach to determining learning styles and motivational attributes has the potential to improve persistence and achievement. We need to get better and finding the 'hook' that will motivate students to do difficult work.

• Teacher gap: Increasing graduation requirements are exacerbating the shortage of highly qualified math and science teachers. Engaging content and distance learning have the potential to fill the gap.

• Special needs: while the US spends more than a fifth of its education budget on special needs populations, we don't actually have very effective means of diagnosing and treating learning disabilities. New assessment and learning tools have the potential to address these needs in a far more productive way.

In short, innovative learning tools and formats have the potential to help students worldwide gain access to learning and, as a result, a productive life.

Most states and foundations are trying to improve system components. It's like replacing a fuel pump on a '57 Chevy -- it will run better, but it's not what you need. This is a design problem. The challenge is inventing (and investing in) the future of learning. This is a task for entrepreneurs and the risk takers that support them. We need to create room for them to get to work, reduce some of the barriers, and provide a little support.

If our public school system is GM in the 80s, the question is, what are we going to do about it? Innovation will happen with or without the US public schools. We're already seeing the development of a new learning ecosystem with Wikipedia and open content, virtual charter schools, peer-to-peer learning sites, adaptive learning games, and online language learning. Do we ride the system we have into bankruptcy or invent better ways to learn? Ask your superintendent or next governor, "Are we fixing the Chevy or inventing the future?"

Comments

[myopinion2]

My son currently is in a mixed- race/socioeconomic public highschool and doing quite well. He doesn't like to work so hard, so we've had issue with homework and studying. But not only is he aquiring much substantive knowledge and intellectual skills, he is learning the discipline of completing tasks even if he is not motivated to do so -- which is an indispensable character trait for a successful career and succeeding in the world once school is over. If you think that local taxes are high now, just wait and see what they will be if you adopt these innovative but expensive -- and unproven -- reforms.

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

As far as our educational system is concerned the last century of discoveries in the field of human cognitive studies might as well as never happened. Our 'education' system is uninterested in the issue of how people actually learn.
That's because the dirty little secret that 'education' is only the secondary purpose.

From 'Why Nerds are Unpopular'
http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

"Teenagers now are useless, except as cheap labor in industries like fast food, which evolved to exploit precisely this fact. In almost any other kind of work, they'd be a net loss. But they're also too young to be left unsupervised. Someone has to watch over them, and the most efficient way to do this is to collect them together in one place. Then a few adults can watch all of them.

If you stop there, what you're describing is literally a prison, albeit a part-time one. The problem is, many schools practically do stop there. The stated purpose of schools is to educate the kids. But there is no external pressure to do this well. And so most schools do such a bad job of teaching that the kids don't really take it seriously-- not even the smart kids. Much of the time we were all, students and teachers both, just going through the motions."

[elmerfude]

I think it was Bill Gates who said a few years ago that we shouldn't even bother to reform the American high school--just abandon them and start over. I taught science for 12 years out of college and then later went on to a career in industry. I recently went to a science teacher conference. I don't think much has changed over the last 30 years in methods or certification requirements. There is some great educational technology available but I doubt if most schools can afford it. My view of science education is that it should be taught hands-on, project style just like real scientists work and it should be taught by people with some actual experience and training in science. It should also be emphasized at the upper elementary and junior high levels because that is where interest in science is solidified. If you wait for high school, it is too late because the ordinary student will elect not to take the more advanced science courses thereby excluding themselves from a whole range of career options. I don't think distant learning can fill the gap in science education. Unfortunately people like me with 12 years teaching experience and 24 years industry experience are not about to go through all the red tape and nonsense of getting re-certified.

[manlypoint]

Excellent points, especially about the need to get them in a project-style learning early. Only 2% of our kids major in engineering in college. If we can get them interested in the miracles of science early on, and not just on the diffculties of science as a subject, then we will be able to foster the next generation of Cricks, Hawkings, et al.