Start with defining the goal of education. To me, the goal is to provide the necessary tools and knowledge to COMPETE in life. The goal is NOT to indoctrinate the students along political, sexual, or religious directions. Pushing the education Responsibilities to the individual states is great, but there should be a Federal set of Accountabilities that the States should be held to that the States should comply with or not receive federal support. National testing standards for students AND teachers should be implemented. It’s all about proper ACCOUNTABILITIES by institutions, teachers, students and parents.
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I’m assuming you are talking about primary K-12 public education. I agree that the U.S. education system is an embarrassment. Achievement and proficiency scores tell the story. Annual Per-student spending ranges from $9k to $24k in public schools, while national average proficiency scores are around 35%. This means that only 35% of students can meet even the very low standards required for “proficiency”. However, testing standards are a double edged sword. Teachers “teach to the test” in order to meet standards (even though they are apparently failing at even that, with no accountability).
One overarching issue, as with all government controlled organizations, is that there is little market-based incentive to produce a good “product”. One simple change would be to allow “funding follows the student” policies in states so that parents and students can choose among available school alternatives.
The transition will be messy, as “teachers” unions (whose ONLY interest is in extracting maximum pay and benefits for school employees, not in educating students) will violently oppose the change, unscrupulous “for profit” school operators will attempt to take advantage (but keep in mind that these fraudsters exist already in primary as well as vocational and community level “education institutions” - see how much Federal student loan money and subsidies go to these currently). But, over time, the money, when allowed a choice, will go to the best institutions.
Oh, by the way, reforming corrupt (yes, CORRUPT) teachers unions will go a long way toward fixing schools. If you look at where school spending is allocated, over the last 15 years the school budgets have bloated with highly paid non-teacher positions:
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Great comments and I totally agree with you. Part of the accountabilities should be focused on post-education achievement, not during the education process. No schools track how well their graduates perfor after school. For example, if you have a child and want to choose the best school for them, wouldn’t you want to pick a school whose students earned 20% higher income after the first 3 years of graduation than other schools? Schools should compete on student post-graduation outcomes.
Good point. That is a metric that doesn’t exist today and it is a valid measure of education achievement. It’s difficult to pin down this type of lagging indicator, as some fields have higher salaries, some students may decide to be at-home parents with minimal or no direct income, the prevailing economy as a whole will influence incomes, etc. I know that universities try to use this type of metric to recruit new students.
In general, we can improve the U.S. education system through performance standards based upon relevant metrics, union reform (state gov’t is in the pocket of the unions), trimming the administrative bloat, empowering students via school choice, and, frankly, promoting a cultural shift in attitudes toward education.
As in many other areas, the Federal government has grossly overreached in primary education. We can improve education performance by returning control of education to the states and putting the responsibility for education quality in the hands of the “laboratories of democracy”. Unfortunately, states are currently addicted to Federal Dep’t of Ed money, which is in turn used to force states to adopt ridiculous education standards and policies dictated by the Federal government. Abolish the Federal Department of Education!
Abolishing the Dep’t of Education might be a somewhat painful transition. But, with less than 5000 employees, it is by far the smallest Cabinet agency. Downsizing or reassigning them is doable. It has a sixty-eight BILLION dollar ($68,000,000,000) budget, though, so eliminating that funding would have an immediate impact on schools.
Eliminating Federal funding entirely would represent about a 25% reduction in states’ school money (states contribute 75% of school funding, primarily through property tax). So cutting Federal funding completely would be a shock to the system and require states to reduce school spending or raise taxes. And, of course, in the case of spending cuts, arts/music programs, bus service, after-school care, etc. are always first to go. Assuming the more acceptable option is to maintain Federal subsidies, the question becomes “how do we fairly allocate Federal funding for education if we don’t have 5000 people in the Department of Education to tell us how to spend it?”
It’s an economic truth that if you subsidize something you get more of it, which explains the bloat and inefficiency in the public education system. So, coming up with a way to allocate the Federal education funding is potentially a huge problem if we let the politicians get involved. I’d propose a simple solution: if we are committed to continuing to supplement state education budgets with Federal funding (and there are supporting arguments for this in terms of equity among “rich” and “poor” states), simply provide flat per-student funding to each state Board of Education and let them allocate the money as they see fit. There should be absolutely no “adjustments” allowing for Federal bureaucrats or politicians to manipulate the allocation of funding. Each state simply gets the same funding per student. What could be more fair? Even better: doing this will result in an immediate 33% increase in the amount of Federal funding that goes to students without increasing Federal education spending by a penny.
Some states will continue to politicize, complicate, and misallocate the education funding (and perform poorly) and some will (eventually) improve their state’s educational system when they realize that the success of their state in terms of population and industry growth, incomes, etc. can be dramatically improved. At least give them the control and let them compete, while at the same time being more directly responsible for results.
Enable states to be free to innovate, which they are not now due to Federal dictates and powerful “teacher” unions who lock students in to terrible schools.
Imagine if a smart governor is elected in Mississippi and they are able to bring efficiency and high performance to their education system. Yes, it may take 10+ years or more (one cohort of students through the entire K-12) but it would certainly reverse the downward spiral and other states would (hopefully, with pressure from citizens) respond. Governors would have to campaign (compete) on the issue of education system improvement to gain power. As it is, politicians mindlessly repeat “we need to invest in education (that is, give us MORE money)” at election time with no concept of “pay for performance” and no acknowledgement of the staggering amount we already spend for such atrocious results.
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Education should be life skills based and interest led. We should not be putting children into one size fits all education programs, but rather treating each child as if they have their own distinct god given gifts and purposes. Our job as educators and parents is to guide and lead them and provide a foundation of values and skills that will carry them through. The focus should be on building their character, not on where they score in an aptitude test. Some children are better doing work with their hands, some are good at reading and teach, some art, some athletics. There shouldn’t be such a think as “standard education” because the system and standardized curriculum cannot evolve as quickly as the world around these children chances. These children should be learning through life experiences and not sitting in desks memorizing facts to get through a test.
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Also group sizes should be smaller and of mixed ages.
This is easily done by abolishing the federal dept. Of education. Our education standards have declined continually since this deptment was created.
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The administrative bloat is one of the biggest problems. Smaller schools - less administrators…give the power back to the community and the parents - and the money, too.
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YES! I agree completely. Today’s “factory schools” are a terrible experience for students. You are telling young children to sit still, shut up, memorize this, and move on when the bell rings. Let kids be kids. They are natural learners. Home schooling is one answer, but not for everyone. Here again, if you unburden schools from Federal mandates, allocate funding more efficiently, and free parents and students to have school choice, teachers and schools can adapt and innovate. I have to believe that today’s teachers hate school almost as much as the students.
The free market will fix teacher’s salary, if you get unions to support the idea the children are more important than the teachers.
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A big part of the problem is that the education system doesn’t know or agree on who the “customer” is. Is it the student, parent, teachers, government, business? Until that is agreed to, there will always be conflicting priorities.
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This is HUGE great idea!
Also, trade skills should be added starting in elementary. This also teaches problem solving skills early in development. Then as they graduate high school, whatever trade skill they attached to and became most interested in, could lead to PAID Trade Internship and if they want to go to college later, the company that hires them for the trade could help with continuing education.
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Did you know that standardized testing originated in imperial China, where it was used to determine government jobs through the civil service exam system? In the U.S., the creator of our standardized tests later admitted that they were too crude for practical use. Despite this, his concerns were ignored, and these tests were pushed onto society, shaping our modern education system.
Replace memorization with learning human nature, analysis, discernment of AI, and the benefits of virtue.