How to Fix Education — and save thew world by doing so
Its nothing novel in saying that our education system is in a challenging state right now. And truth be told, there are amazing people out there trying to tackle this issue in a variety of ways.
There are so many different lens to take on education and places to start. However, for me, I keep coming back to K-12. I personally have not seen or read enough (maybe I’m not looking in the right places) about innovation in K-12 education for the majority population. Most of what I find are folks innovating at the college level and above, or for the Top 2–3% of K-12 through new, technology driven schools and classroom approaches.
Should come as no surprise that those two areas have the most non-government, or direct consumer, economics behind them.
But what about everyone else? How do we improve K-12 for the majority? I’ve boiled the fundamental issues down to 3 core areas:
- Teaching as a Profession
- Grading / Evaluation
- Costs of Gen Pop Education
Let me more specifically describe these 3 problems, before getting into potential solutions.
ISSUE: Teaching as a Profession
We don’t pay our teachers enough. Ok, so everyone knows that by now. The Washington Post just published a recent report highlighting the growing wage gap for teachers.
But to me the issue is a bit deeper. Teaching as a profession is not situated correctly in our society. Teachers become teachers for one of two reasons primarily: 1) you legitimately care and are passionate about education and could do many other things but choose to teach because you are that type of amazing fucking person, 2) you can’t do much of anything else, and its an easy, default career to fall back on.
Unfortunately, there is way too much of the latter than the former. Which brings me to the REAL issue with the teaching profession: Economics 101. Its a supply and demand issue. There frankly are too many shitty teachers out there. We are over-supplied on unqualified teachers, which then pushes down the pay for all of them. Supply > demand will always push down pricing.
Part of this issue is also rooted into today’s classroom structure, something that has not evolved or been iterated on in oh, say 100+ years. But I’ll save that for my solutions piece, lets not get too far ahead. Onto issue #2….
ISSUE: Grading / Evaluation
Talk about a system that has seen zero innovation and iteration…..
From day one of learning, we start evaluating students. And how do we do that: Tests. Tests are the the cancerous tumor in our education system.
Tests are used to inform you if your are smart or not, if you are capable or not, if you deserve to go on to advance learning, heck, if you deserve to go onto further education. Its appalling.
Some students test very well. Some students are programmed mentally to learn through memorization, and are well equipped to perform well on any kind of standardized test. We reward and praise these students as “brilliant” and “future leaders”.
But what about those students who are not programmed that way? Is it so shocking that individuals are wired a bit differently? What about those students who perhaps learn better through conversation or interaction? Or through solving real world problems? Maybe some people perform better when the stakes are REAL and not FAKE or artificial? What about students who are not built to learn from reading textbook at home and memorization?
Well, we call those kids bad students. We hold them back. We label them as not as capable. Or decide they are bound for vocational schooling (another topic that gets my blood boil, will save for another post, but vocational skills are incredibly important and valuable and should be pursued by even our brightest minds if that is what their passion is).
Now, does not getting into AP classes or a Top 5 % university damn you from contributing in life? Absolutely not. Peter Thiel has demonstrated the rather lack of importance of college education as it exists today in this way.
The issue to me is more on the student’s psyche and mental and emotional maturation. Telling a young kid he/she is not good enough, not smart enough, secondary in this way because they do not ‘Test” well with standardized exams is an absolute crime. And it is damaging on that child mentally and emotionally in ways we can’t easily wrap our heads around. Think about how many more truly incredible innovators and creators we would have today if those who are different or learn more abstractly would not have been demeaned and looked down upon by our system. We are cruel to them, we make them angry and resentful when we don’t need to. Perhaps if things were different we would have more Zuckerbergs and less Orlando shootings.
Here is the vicious cycle that this system creates:
- We reward and advance the book-smart students who do well with standardized tests — and often, these people struggle in real world problem solving and creative thinking and often lack the gusto to go build and take risks. I call these people “The Maintenance Folks” — all they can do is maintain what exists, which has value in terms of keeping things from falling apart, but does not create new value or opportunity.
- Meanwhile, we are damning and limiting those who actually learn through building and problem solving, not testing — the very people who create jobs and opportunity and build creatively. I call these people “Our Builders” — the folks who rather than look at a problem and try to find the fastest way to the expected solution (i.e., the right answer on a test), instead carve out a better solution.
Our system is essentially set up to breed more Maintenance people and limit our Builders. Is it any wonder that we are still an oil-reliant global economy that continues to destroy our o-zone layer? Maybe not when you look at things in this way.
Bottom line: its time to evolve how we evaluate students. More on this in solutions bit below.
ISSUE: Costs of Education
So many of our great teachers, schools, and programs sit above a cost threshold that is simply unaffordable for most.
Great education should not be limited to the super elite. I do believe that if one decides to pursue advanced education in a specific field in adult life — medicine, law, etc…there should be a cost to entry to almost ensure someone is serious and dedicated and simply because those fields offer high paying jobs that more than cover the cost of entry — and rightfully so, we need doctors and like it or not, lawyers too :)
But K-12 — the building blocks of becoming a problem solver, of learning to work collaboratively, of gaining your essential skills (btw, notice I’m not talking about Math & Social Studies and so forth specifically, but rather, different principles of basic education, more to come) — the very best of this type of learning should not be reserved for the super elite.
Especially since the super elite simply do not have the life access, experience, and perspective to help us. Only the funds. I had a great conversation with someone recently about how Brooklyn used to be a hot bed of creating artists, musicians, and bold thinkers. But now because of its gentrification, its now home to trendy, douchey hipsters who think real life struggle is their corner coffee shop running out of organic coconut milk from uninhabited islands.
Struggle and adversity drives creative thinking. Often as a form of escape and as a coping mechanism to deal with their surroundings, but imagine if we gave these students, those who have risen in front of real adversity, an amazing education at a young age? Think of what they’d create.
The super elite and those who inherit great wealth should be there to fund the work, not create it. Yet our education system caters to developing them by hiding the best and brightest teachers and tools behind a paywall.
SOLUTIONS
Enough of my bitching and moaning. I don’t believe in calling out issues without proposing solutions. So here are some quick thoughts.
Make Teaching Great
Its about time we make teaching a great, aspiring, high paid profession like we do medicine and law. How in the world is teaching not on par with those 2?
Its not enough to just say — Pay Teachers More. Thats not a solution. Thats like saying — Lets Have World Peach and Love as a solution to ISIS.
But I do think there is a plan.
- Change the classroom: combine in-person with online to allow teachers to increase students per class without losing the attention they need. We can use technology to better assess a student’s needs and progress, to provide a bulk of lectures and material, to do “part” of the evaluation, to help teacher’s better manage their time — which allows us to use fewer teachers to reach and educate more kids. There is a lot to unpack here another time, but just roll with me on this for now.
- Eliminate 50% of teaching jobs. Seriously. If we do the above, we can eliminate half of teaching jobs and solve the supply > demand economics of pricing referenced prior. This allows us to pay teachers more, even if the current existing pool of education funding didn’t change at all.
- Create more rigor and process around becoming a teacher. It should be hard to get a teaching job. You should have to pass an equivalent Bar Exam and be re-evaluated every 5 years to make sure you are staying relevant and informed. I don’t care what subject it is — you should be exceptional both in expertise and the art of teaching and developing young minds to get a job. It should be the hardest job in the world to qualify for.
Change our Evaluation Process
No more bullshit standardized testing. Or at a minimum, its just one ingredient we use and its given a minority weight.
Lets evaluate students based on their ability to solve problems, to notice trends, to collaborate with others. Lets create situations and circumstances that make stakes feel very real and threatning and see who responds.
Lets identify early on how a particular student is programmed and wired and customize their evaluation process accordingly. This isn’t rocket science. Its called segmentation — something every single company does. Its marketing 101.
There are some folks tackling this problem. A friend of mine is running one in fact that is ground breaking in their approach. But we need more of it. And we need companies like hers to succeed and thrive and be adopted by otherwise archaic thinkers and supports of this current evaluation system.
Make Education Free, Through…..
The ultimate drum-roll right there. Everyone should get free education! Yay! Problem solved!
And here is the unrealistic solution everyone always comes back to — government subsidies. The government should pay for it! Of course they should, right? I mean, it makes sense in theory. The government exists to support and build our great nation, and what better way to do that than provide great education. The government has been funding and subsidizing education for years. Whats a little more, right?
Well, one problem — our government is broke as fuck. And they are behind on a lot of their bills. $19.3 trillion to be exact. Thats a lot of IOUs. Its a bar tab that honestly will never get paid, we know that, but it makes spending more and making education free via government spending nearly impossible. Ok, impossible.
So how do we do it? We make K-12 a giant non-profit. A standalone, non-profit organization. Or series of smaller ones that roll up into a unified trade association of sorts.
We reward corporations and high net worth individuals for contributing to this non-profit via, you guessed it, tax write offs. i.e. rather than raising taxes on the most successful to make education free (government spending), we alleviate taxes on the most successful by rewarding them for contributing to this new education non-profit.
Guess what — its the same exact thing in the end. But its all about optics. And 9 out of 10, no, make it 10 out of 10, major corporations, successful business, and wealthy super elite would much rather donate money to a great cause and use that to avoid paying the government than just paying the government more and trusting them to go spend on the same thing.
Cause nobody trusts the government. But they do trust writing their own check to an organization or team they can meet and have a relationship with.
Maybe this is all a pipe dream. But its one that makes me happy :) I do think if we tackled all three areas above, we actually could FIX education. But it would take a lot of amazing people, a lot of collaboration, and a lot of patience to pull it off.
Or, we can just continue on the path we are on and pray to God that Elon Musk both solves this whole Mars thing and is a benevolent leader of the red planet.
EDIT / UPDATE
A friend of mine pointed out, after reading the above, that turning K-12 education into a massive non-profit is a flawed approach. I spent some time this weekend thinking about it, and although I think it works as an ideology — I realize not so much in execution. I mean, true socialism in its truest form makes sense as well, but it too does not work in execution.
Education should be a business. A big business actually. To take a lesson from Silicon Valley — markets actually thrive in monopolistic markets. The company that owns the monopoly must continue to work hard and innovate to stay that way, since its creating such incredible profits. And those that want market share can not do so by making simply incremental improvements — like we do in competitive markets — they must make non-icremental steps, i.e., create and build with technology, to compete.
Google is a monopoly on search. Amazon in online retail. And so forth. Both of those companies have iterated and improved search and retail respectively in the last few years so much further than any would be competition — because they want to keep the dominant position they own. But lets save monopolies vs. competitive markets for another time.
So, if K-12 education is best as a strong business that generates profits, particularly one where there is a monopolistic leader, how then do we make it freely available for all?
Its not by having families pay for it. This is what a few silicon valley edtech folks are doing with K-12 schools….creating really amazing, but very expensive, new school systems. I guess maybe hoping they can create enough profits to then offer free schools as well? Sorry, this isn’t Tom’s Shoes…they will create profit with these great expensive schools for the 5%, but they are not helping the larger K-12 issue.
The Google Search example would tell you its through advertising. They don’t charge us to search for things, right? They monetize that with sponsored search results. But this model depends on a crazy scale of volume, not to mention, I don’t really see much of a play for “Your Biology class today is sponsored by Chipotle” working at scale…..
But what if we look at the world of massive multi-player games? World of Warcraft for League of Legends. They monetize through in-game currencies. The game itself is free to download and play, and as they create scale and engagement in that way, you then pay for tiny upgrades, skills, unlocked locations, etc….
Could that work for education? Could we make attendance to school free but then monetize that experience through various ‘in-school currencies and offerings?
Should it be free? Maybe there is a path towards a more regulated structuring for paying for school.
Or, maybe there is a baseline fee for families adjusted to their income level — similar to the tax system. Every family pays 5% of household income for one child, 7% for two, 8% for three….in this way it is regulated and fair across the board. And maybe the government has to match it $1 for $1.
At another time, I’ll pull some proper data and do some modeling work to play around with a few of these scenarios. But for now, I wanted to just update my original post, around the non-profit piece specifically, highlighting that I think a pathway towards making education BOTH a big successful business AND affordable .