The more complicated the situation in Education becomes, the more simple the solutions are becoming. There is a clear choice here. We can have a future system that utilizes the present fragmentation of the educational structure we knew, to put together competitive, innovative units of many different types that have in common their control by parents. Parents who can use their state’s per-student money their child is entitled to, and choose a school. Or we can succumb to pressure, and let the teachers unions run the show, and use the money the states provide per student, to further their primarily adult oriented goals… ie. more teachers.
The Wall Street Journal recently had a piece that reminded readers about class size in the heyday of our education; fewer teachers and larger classes. But despite all the efforts that have been made to improve results since then, through large expenditure on more teachers for smaller classes, results are poor. Math and reading scores for 17-year-olds today are about the same as they were in 1970.
This has to do with both the quality of the individual teacher, and the presently dawning realization that learning surges as a result of student interaction far more than had been understood. This is seen most clearly, as I mentioned in an earlier piece, when flipping puts the information on line for homework, and makes the teacher a coach for later discussion of the material. The fact that large classes progress faster than the small ones offers some evidence of that. It is interesting too that at the university level the same phenomenon happens. MIT observed this, and their President wrote about it recently. He said his advanced students did not want academic help or coaching after viewing work online, preferring to work together….at least in the instance he was discussing.
There are other aspects to our changing system, of course. But this one is interesting in both its educational and financial ramifications. Keep your eyes open…there is surely more to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment