Cashing in on Education

"Why can't I just quit school and go to work?"

Ever hear that from your high schooler?  Maybe your 3rd grader?  

The national average price paid per pupil across the US is $12,612.  That means each kid costs that much every year.  This starts out at the upper end where New York spends $24,000 per pupil including a ton of money for pensions.  Utah is in last place, or is it first place?  They spend $7,628 per student.  *Stats from educationdata.org

America is not getting its money's worth.  Nope.  In large cities like New York, New York where students are costing $24,000 per student per year 80% are graduating and 80% of those can read.  Wow.  You know I'm actually surprised it's that high.  Maybe there is some statistical...creativity.  Maybe there are affluent schools bringing the average up.  Maybe there are some really good charter and private schools that just get it done.  Then again, exclusive private schools shouldn't even effect those statistics.  Maybe if the US used vouchers and we SHOULD use vouchers.  

Heck, maybe the numbers are fudged.  I'd believe that.  I just read 13 Ways of Going on a Field Trip.  Seems like there are some heroic and idealistic teachers in New York fighting a tsunami, but the tsunami is winning.  I've heard horror stories from people who work at Title 1 schools, and movies, and articles, and my own experiences these past five years at Title 1 schools.  

My personal assessment is that students and parents lack motivation.  Some students will do well for themselves.  Some students will do well for their parents.  Some students will do well to play sports or do the arts.  All of that adds up to maybe 50% and still few of those have an intrinsic motivation to retain knowledge rather than to score well on the test and dump their knowledge.  Still even that doesn't deal with the other 50% ish who aren't motivated by parents, sports, or anything else. 

Here's one idea.  Let's pay the students $500 a year to get A's and B's and good attendance.  Say $80 bucks per six weeks if they get A's and B's and only 2 absences, no more than 5 tardies.  They can lose out one or two Marking Periods and fix it in the others.  What about paying parents the same amount?  Now moms and dads are motivated to send their kids to bed on time, and get to school on time, and encourage them to do homework each night.  Maybe parents could even sit down with the kids regularly and look at their grades to hold them accountable.  

There does seem to be something perverse about paying students and parents to succeed.  After all we're already giving them something that has the ability to really do amazing things. Just go look up quotes about the value of education and you'll see Erasmus said, "The main hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth."  "Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave. -Fredrick Douglas.  "A child without an education is like a bird without wings."  "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."   So should America pay its people to take this great thing?  Yeah.  

We already pay kids the price of the school building, team sports, pensions, teacher's salaries, counselors, and admin. We pay too much to try to grow their motivations instead of just trying to pay them to be motivated.  Let's buy their motivations.  

I often think, 'I could teach 40 students at a time in all of my classes IF each student was as good as HN, MI, or DS (initials used to protect identities).  You've had students like that, right?  What if they all were?  What if they were pressing you for all they might incidentally need to know instead of asking if they'll really need all this?  What if they self-regulated class and other student's behavior so that they could all hear and succeed?  What if they tried to butter you up, but were also conscientiously trying to not look like they were?  What if they all vied to be the teacher's pet?  Would teachers need as much pay and as much support staff?  Nope.

Could this lead to cheating?  For example, a teacher offers a good grade for part of the cash?  Yes.  But would you want to trust a student to keep quiet about that?  I wouldn't.  Could students and parents make a scene and argue?  Could rotating teachers and standardized testing be used to back up all teacher data?  Yes.  

It wouldn't have to be every school or even every school in one state.  It would just have to be a couple of charters to create the experiment.  I know there would be tons of teachers, parents, and students titillated by the opportunity. Then again, I didn't even ask Google if it was legal.

End Secondary School

I don't think there should be secondary school anymore.

Why would someone have secondary school?  Well, to teach the students everything they would need in life.  Really.  That sounds impossible.  Maybe we endeavor to teach citizens the things that make them fit the definition of educated.  However, schools largely don't do that.  Schools probably never did, or how many students can pass the same calculus exams that proved mastery one month later?  

And what does it take to teach the students these things?  It takes motivated students and only barely competent teachers.  It takes supportive parents who encourage and partner with students and teachers.  Over the decades the motivation of students has dropped, the buy in of the parents has flopped, and the competency of the teachers has gone up.  These statements are addressing averages.

Now there are teachers who don't do much.  They are at these failure factories in inner cities and they are working with too many students who don't care.  They lost the battle and their job is to shift the blame and cover the truth.  If America doesn't know, schools in inner cities are broken.  

But where the battle to educate is still being waged, public schools expected less and less and less.  In some academic game of high jump the children will keep adjusting to the lowered bar until they are refusing to jump centimeters.  They have and they do play limbo until they simply won't engage the bar.  School isn't teaching the minimum basic skills because there is no reason for the students to learn.  

So just end secondary school requirements.  Stop sending millions of kids who don't want to go to school to learn something they don't want to learn.  If kids want to go to middle school or high school or if their parents are highly motivated for them to go then they can go.  Then teachers wouldn't be spending out-sized time trying to make oppositional defiant teens pass arbitrary requirements.  Teachers can focus on the students who WANT to be there.  Students can get what they need.  The bills would be cut.  The arbitrary nature of grades can be amended up instead of down for the first time in decades.  

Just change schools to Primary (K-3rd) and Senior (4th-6th) and finally Remedial (7th).  In primary students will spend a lot of their time in the same way they do now.  However, maybe with more emphasis put on fewer grade levels there can be more teachers per student.  One teacher teaching 10-15...with a helper.  Sounds great! Student citizens need only to gain powers of reading, writing, and arithmetic.

It's all they need.  To read with good vocabulary and understanding for simple facts.  The idea that all 16 year olds can engage with Chaucer, Shakespeare, or Dickens is ludacris.  As surely as the idea that all 50 year olds can.  To do basic math well enough to mentally balance a checkbook.  To write opinions and feelings.  The list of requirements isn't large, and yet elementary schools are pushing some algebraic ideas into the lower levels so they'll be ready for them in secondary school.  That's crazy. Members of our society don't lament thirty year olds who can't find a hypotenuse, but America rightly cringes when we hear of high school grads who cannot read and write at a third grade level.  Forget the first problem and attack the second.  

Senior School (4th thru 6th) would be the time for high-stakes, standardized testing.  Students would need to prove their mastery of all ESSENTIAL (meaning a lot of them aren't essential) knowledge and skills.  Just as today this should be based on teachers grades, formative assessments, and standardized testing.  State testing would continue and increase in these early grades as children are proving mastery and schools are graded for their capability.  This makes politicians and test-writer lobbyists happy.

7th Grade would be for the ones who couldn't get through.  And as their peers move on they would be given more focus and attention.  Diagnosticians could give extra time.  Master teachers could be employed.  Summer school could be elongated.  The light at the end of the tunnel could be shown to them.  Once they get it they...

If a student doesn't choose to continue traditional, but re envisioned secondary school.  Send them to get a job.  They could be making their own money, helping their families, or a bit of both.  In my class I tell my kids that if they don't get through high school they'll probably only work menial jobs.  But some kids don't find this threatening.  Let's let them work at Domino's pizza, or Starbucks, or a grocery store, or where ever, for half of minimum wage.  Simply tie a juvenile minimum wage to the federal minimum wage.  Now a 12 or 13 year old kid can work for five years instead of secondary school. Kids can become apprentice construction workers, plumbers, daycare, animal groomers, or anything else  They can make more than minimum wage if their employers find them valuable.  

I can envision assistant managers taking over a fast food restaurant when they turn 18 because they've been working there 6 years.  General Manager may not happen until they go to business classes for a year or two, but that's way better than starting that trajectory at age 19.  

Plus, I'm tired of college graduates working at Starbucks.  Lets let them forgo Harvard and start butchering names right away.

Maybe you also don't let them vote until they pass their school.  I know sounds racially charged because it used to be, but I like the idea of the school graduation earning something.  How about you can't get a job until you graduate 6th grade and you can't vote until you can read the candidates positions.  Maybe people will care more about their vote if they all had to earn it.

Maybe they would care more about school if it earned them something.