Public Education Has Gone Stale; Can Technology Refresh It?
By Harvey Mathews, president, SAO
We have all heard about the knowledge economy. We know that rigorous education from pre-k to 16+ is the most important metric for our region’s future success. Yet our systems of education continue to use old methods, tired forms and anachronistic structures, in spite of many cutting-edge local companies in this space. Our education system needs to be broken, turned on its head and put back together again if we want to build a knowledge economy in the Northwest.
Here are the top 3 problems with our current pre-k-through-6 education system and some proposed technology-inspired solutions to arouse your critical thinking:
1) Teacher empowerment, quality & pay
Problem:
Teachers and professors are the most important piece of the education system, yet as a rule they are treated like cogs in a machine. Teaching is performance art, applied neuroscience and intense grassroots public relations. Good teachers are worth their weight in gold. Paradoxically, bad teachers can ruin students’ outlook on learning for the rest of their lives. Why do administrators make 3x what teachers make? Why are k-12 teachers complacent with a one-size fits all “experience and education” matrix to reward their individual expertise? Why don’t university professors get a bonus when their students can demand higher-than-average salaries in the workforce?
Solution:
We could be using democratic social voting tools mixed with hard data from standardized tests that measure changes in individual student performance over a course. Based on this data, students, parents and peers can rate individual teacher performance. Good teachers should be paid six-figures (and work year-round). The lowest 10% should be fired. Simply by using this technology and acting on the data we would improve the teaching ranks, we would see incredible year-over-year improvement in everything from dropout rates to standardized tests.
2) Parental empowerment
Problem:
Why do parents have to complain in order to get quality results for their children? I have met with hundreds of parents, both as a teacher and education policy advisor. Parents of children with special needs, minority students and talented and gifted skills wage battle with a school system that seems to be myopically dedicated to the median student (unless someone prevails against the schools in a lawsuit). Parents are the consumer in our education system; they pay taxes for a service and they are ultimately responsible for the long-term care of the students.
Solution:
We live in a capitalist society, so let’s embrace it when it comes to education. Vouchers are “so 90s” with their have-versus-have-not dialectic. Instead, we can take the spirit of vouchers into consideration as we use collaborative tools to allow parents to form a virtual community of parents that create a school/district/state budget. If administrators want to overrule the wisdom of the crowd while budgeting, they will have to answer to the parents. Budgets should not be built without input from the consumer.
3) Student choice
Problem:
I start with the Montessori-esque premise that students want to learn and it is the education systems’ role to provide stimulating instruction. Currently, students are passive consumers of education, with zero input on their class offerings. The system expects students to adapt their interest to topics they don’t care about. This should be turned on its head.
Solution:
Businesses are learning the value of “push” versus “pull” when it comes to their consumer information needs. Simple use of survey technology would go a long way to making school relevant to more students. Education systems need to value the interests of students prior to determining course offerings. Students will be motivated to learn when topics are interesting to them.
If we even made baby steps in these areas, we would see remarkable improvements in our schools, colleges and universities.
There are many Northwest companies actively engaged in helping the education system adapt (in a more tactful manner than I have outlined above). These companies are part of the Northwest Education Cluster, which has been organized by volunteer Jim Snyder of Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA). Look into some of these great companies to get a sense of Oregon’s expertise in this area – and purchase their technology to help a student or teacher of your choice!
Education Technology Companies in the Northwest
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