A Cog in Our Outdated Education System

Whenever I watch Ted Talks about Education like this one by John Green that I watched tonight and listen to students ask the question "When am I going to use this?" I hear people that are critical of the current education system and it causes me to reevaluate the education system that I am part of.

Education is correctly described as a series of hurdles that students need to jump over so they can graduate, get a "good job" and then be happy. At least that is what students are told by parents and many teachers. Last week I was teaching a Geometry lesson early in the year about measuring angles using a protractor. A student looked at me and asked "When am I ever going to use this?" and I had to honestly answer "You probably will never use this in your lives." The student was a bit shocked that a teacher would give an honest answer. The buzz in the class continued, so I continued to explain. "The reason why you need to learn Geometry is because it is on the SAT and the ACT, the two college entrance exams. You also need to learn Geometry is because it will prepare you for Algebra 2, which will prepare you for Pre-Calculus, which is equivalent to what is called 'College Algebra' in most colleges and this is a requirement for most college degrees. So you need to learn Geometry, but not because you will use every idea that we study someday." Essentially I was describing the hurdle system of an "outdated system" (Sugata Mitra's TED Talk).

The outdated system of education is seen in many ways. It is seen in the number of college graduates who can't find a job. It is seen in high school graduates who were only prepared for college, and then chose not to go to college. These high school graduates are then completely unprepared for life as an adult. The outdated system is seen when parents see their high school and college graduates struggle in the world and wonder why their "Get good grades" mantra didn't prepare their children for success in the real world.

If I were to re-invent education from scratch to prepare students for the 21st century. Education would look very different from how it does today. I imagine it wouldn't be bound by heavily structured schedules. It wouldn't include all of the math, science, history, English, etc. that are required for high school graduation. I think the place that we need to start is asking the question: "What do all adults need to know?" instead of asking what is required for to prepare students for college. I imagine a system that is not bound by grades, but results in authentic products that can be shared. I imagine a system where students are taught how to collaborate with each other and work together for a common goal. I don't know exactly what it would look like and how to hold students accountable, but I know that it wouldn't be like what we have today.

Essentially, it boils down the fact that I feel like a cog in an outdated education system. I know that there is a better way, but I feel powerless to make any changes. I don't want to leave my secure job of teaching because I have a family to provide for. Reflections like this draw me back to Project Based Learning, because I believe that this develops skills that are useful outside of school. I just need people to collaborate with. What would a truly Project Based Learning Geometry or Statistics class look like? How do we prepare students for the 21st century and for a future world that is unlike our current one?

Changes I would like to see in public education

I have always wondered why politicians and policy makers are the ones who make important decisions about education. Just because they have been through an educational program does not mean that they understand how to administer one. Why are educators and educational professionals not more involved in the decisions that impact students? Part of the reason is that teachers are kept so busy that they don't have time to get involved in these decisions.

If anyone asked me, here are some of the changes that I would like to see in public education.

1. Shorten summer vacation

The first change that I would like to see is a shorter summer vacation. Two and a half months is so long that many students forget things they spent nine months to learn. This can happen in one of two ways, we can treat public education more like year-round schools and have more days off during the school year or we can simply add more academic days to the school calendar. I want summer vacation to be no longer than six weeks.

This is also when the educational gap happens between the low and high socioeconomic students. Generally speaking middle and high socioeconomic parents provide educational experiences for their students during the summer (for example reading programs at the library) but low socioeconomic parents may not. If we want to be serious about closing the educational gap, then we need to shorten summer vacation.

In Japan their summer vacation is six weeks long (mid-July until the end of August), but their school year does not start in August. It starts in April. I never realized the pedagogical implications of this until recently. Imagine completing the first semester at school, leaving for summer vacation and coming back to the same teachers. Those teachers know what you learned and how you learned it and would be the best ones to remind you of what you learned during the previous semester. Teachers would also be more aware of the importance of teaching for long term memory.

2. Start school later

Research shows that adolescents aren't fully awake until later in the morning. My school starts at 7:40, which was an improvement from a few years ago when we started at 7:20. My school goes from 7:40 until 2:15. I wonder why we couldn't go from 8:40 until 3:15. One extra hour of sleep would help my students. I also think that more students would eat breakfast if they had a little more time in the morning.

The only reason that I have heard for not starting later is that it would cut into practice time for sports and other extra-curricular activities. If this is true, I wish that we would value education over sports.

3. Pay teachers more by cutting spending in other places

When I was in college I had very intelligent friends who were studying engineering who told me that they would go into education if they would be paid more. We need great teachers for our students and many potential great teachers go into other fields because of how poorly teachers are paid. I also know that about 50% of teachers leave within the first five years of teaching. The teachers who drop out of teaching are frequently the ones who have the right heart. They do everything they can to help their students but they get burned out and the appeal of getting paid more to do less makes them leave. I would not be in favor of increasing taxes to pay teachers more. I see potential in three places, but there may be more.

First is textbooks. I listened to a podcast where an administrator explained that they paid teachers to work through the summer to develop a curriculum to use the next school year. The administrator used the money that they would have spent on textbooks to pay the teachers. There are many reasons why I love this idea. One reason is that the teachers at the school better understand their demographic of student than the textbook writers. It is true that teacher preparation programs would need to include a class or more on curriculum development, but this would be a great thing for every teacher to understand. If throwing out the textbook is too extreme, I would at least like to see schools purchase only the student edition of the textbooks. I don't know any great teachers who heavily use the supplementary materials with the exception of a test generator software. Teachers don't need the teacher's edition or the workbooks of the other things that commonly come with the textbook. I don't know if I am a great teacher, but these materials just sit on my shelf and accumulate dust. Great teachers pull from other sources.

A second place that schools can cut back is their spending on educational technology. In every school that I have taught in I have seen tens of thousands of dollars (even hundreds of thousands in a 1 to 1 program) of educational products rolled out to teachers with minimal professional development. The honest truth is if you simply give an experienced teacher a new device they will continue teaching as they always have. The interactive white board will replace the white board and marker with little change. The 1 to 1 laptop will replace the computer at home. This money is being pored into education and no one is talking about the fact that educational outcomes, like standardized test scores don't change. I wouldn't be opposed to teachers getting new technology when they ask for it, but I am opposed to dumping technology into a school without the professional development to make teacher's practice better than it was before. I know that this money is usually earmarked for technology, but why?

A third place that I think that schools can cut back is on janitorial services. In Japanese schools they don't have janitors. About once a week the entire school stops and cleans the school. All students and teachers clean desks, bathrooms, pull weeds on their dirt fields, etc. I think students would treat the facilities better if they helped clean them. Also, this would teach students important skills in cleaning that they could use at home, when they are at college or have a family of their own.

4. More professional development and collaboration

If teachers are being paid more, then more can be expected from them. For example teachers could work through the month long summer break. Also as the academic school year is lengthened, teachers could frequently come into work when there are no students. Here is a list of things they can do:

1. Receive and give professional development. This could be as simple as teachers holding classes on things they feel experienced with that other teachers could attend.
2. Work in a PLN to develop a new lesson and then have that lesson taught. This idea is sometimes called Lesson Study. This practice has been used in Japan and over time has improved their level of pedagogy.
3. Prepare lesson plans and then have administrators visit classrooms more frequently.

I would also like to see more collaboration between teachers. I don't mean a forced PLN, but something that happens naturally with teachers who are willing. At the very least I wish that teachers were encouraged to visit other teacher's classrooms to watch them teach and then discuss the lesson with that teacher. 

This happens formally in some schools in Japan. They are called Research Lessons. The teacher prepares a lesson that focuses on a skill that they are developing as a teacher. Then when they teach that lesson anyone is invited to attend: administrators, other teachers, university students studying education, even parents I have heard. Then following that lesson they hold a formal discussion where they answer questions about pedagogical choices that they made. I would love to see something like this develop in American schools.

5. Standardized Tests should measure students, not teachers

This list would not complete if I didn't say something about standardized tests. I am blessed to teach for the Department of Defense and have avoided many of the stresses of standardized tests. My students take at most two standardized tests per year, the PSAT (9th - 11th graders) and the Terra Nova (only 9th graders). What I think my school system does very well is how the schools use the data. It gives the teachers and administrators information about where we are weak as a school. The data is not paired to individual teachers and no teacher would get fired if their students don't do well. This also means that we don't dedicate any test prep time out of our time to teach content.

If the standardized test should affect anyone, it should affect the students. Right now there is nothing to motive the students besides something external like a pizza party if everyone does well. In Japan the only equivalent to standardized tests that I know about are Entrance Exams. Students have to take an entrance exam to get into college, high school, and sometimes even junior high school and elementary school. Some schools are better than others and everyone knows it. Students want to get into the best schools to prepare them for a better future. I don't think a school system like this would work in America, but I do believe that Japanese students do their best on these exams because it has a direct impact on them.

Final Thoughts

I know that I don't have plans for all of these ideas, but I believe that plans could be developed with collaboration with many educational professional. I also know that many of these ideas would not be supported by most teachers. For example most teachers wouldn't be in favor of losing their summer vacation, losing their afternoons, and having other teachers visit their class. I believe that these changes would be better for students and that is why I would like to see them.

If you agree or disagree with some of these changes or if I missed a change that you want to see in education please leave a comment below.