A Few Ideas for Education Reform

Education reform gets a lot of talk these days. Amongst all of that talk there is little agreement except the fact that our system of education needs to be reformed to match the challenges of the 21st century. I have a few ideas that I think would solve a lot of problems while also letting students and parents create the education they think is best for their kid.

• Open enrollment/Open employment: Where you live should not decide your quality or level of education and teachers get paid by the amount of students they attract.

Students should be able to enroll in any school in the state without any consideration of where they live and also choose the teachers they feel are best for them at any particular school.  I would open this up even more to mean that if a student wishes to pick classes a-la-carte at a few different schools then let it be. Its not the state's responsibility to get them to all those schools but if they choose to go that route they should be able to do it that way. With today's technology in many instances students wouldn't even need to leave one building to take a class at another.

In addition, teachers should be able to offer their class(es) at multiple institutions if they have the demand heavy enough for their services. If a teacher is creative enough to be able to effectively reach a lot of students or create high enough demand for their classes than they should get paid for it. I would imagine the really great ones will train others in their methods as they need people to assist them and this would allow great teaching methods and teachers to grow and spread. While at the same time discourage the mediocre or poor teacher from keeping the status quo because if they don't have students, they don't have income.

• Students and Parents; NOT TEST SCORES; should evaluate teachers, and what better way than with the choice of who teaches them.

To make the openness of choice described above work, the money flow needs to be reversed with students paying teachers they choose and teachers paying administrators/buildings to teach there. This type of system would flip our current school system upside down as administrators would be rewarded for creating an atmosphere that great teachers and students want to be in, earning their money from teachers using the facilities they manage. Students know who their most influential teachers are and should be able to choose who teaches them. This would challenge schools to rethink how they do everything including school hours and schedules but ultimately it would let the relationship between students and teachers as well as teachers and administrators create the type of education that the students feel they need. I see this as the same type of change that is happening all over, of building bottom up power structures instead of top down power structures.

• Getting Credit for ALL learning: Give kids credit for all of their activities and license the teachers/coaches of those activities because students learn through doing them all.
• Defining a Highly Qualified Teacher-must be able to clearly communicate their curriculum with well defined learning objectives as well as established competence in their subject of study.

Kids learn in everything they do in life so why not give students credit for the learning that takes place in their extra and co-curricular activities. Also, if teachers/coaches are licensed by their curriculum and expertise than this allows many people who may not even realize they are teaching get credit for what they are contributing to our students' education. For example if a sporting coach is teaching lifetime fitness, leadership, and life skills through a sport as opposed to just the fundamentals of the sport they should be able to show it in their curriculum. Students would then know what they are getting out of an activity they choose to participate in. This would create a much more diverse selection of paths for students to choose from in many subjects while at the same time inviting and adding incentive for more people to get involved in education even if only on a part time basis. The really great thing is that a lot of it ALREADY exists, its just a matter of opening the door and letting it in.

When a teacher has to communicate what they are teaching to parents, students, and administrators, they become very aware of what they are teaching and how they are impacting students. This forces them to think about what and how they are teaching instead of just blindly following a presripted school curriculum and teaching the same way they were taught.

Certainly my experience as a private music teacher influences these ideas. I have to recruit and retain my students on a weekly basis. They always have a choice of whether they want to continue to study with me. And certainly to implement some of the changes I have described above how funds get to students/parents hands to spend on education is a huge decision. Also, the government does have a right to demand certain parts of an education, such as the study of how our government works and the rights and responsibilities of a citizen, when it pays for the education and after all it is for the betterment of the whole society to have an educated citizenry.

What are your thoughts?