I like to think about our public schools as… a lucrative enterprise?!
Throughout my childhood, I often heard about my parents complaining about how crappy the education in America is. As the victim of numerous teachers who sucked at their jobs, I falsely believed that suffering was a necessary part of schooling. This suffering included useless classes, boring and repetitious homework, and teachers who spent more time controlling us than they did on actually teaching us. Pity.
Applying business skills to our public schools
Thinking back to how I was in fifth grade, I distinctly remember myself wondering, “what if I was the principal of this school?” This would be quite unfortunate for the teachers of my elementary school, because a good chunk of them would have been fired. Sound like how I’d run a company? Precisely.
Time magazine recently wrote about Michelle Rhee, the new superintendent of Washington D.C.’s public school system. They call her a “revolutionary and polarizing force in America education” because she plans on running public schools as if they were businesses. Why, what a novel concept!
To be openly blunt, many teachers suck. While I’m no expert at teaching, it’s quite clear that a good chunk of our education system’s problems come down to America’s lack of good teachers. Instead of being paid by merit and ability, most teachers in the same school are compensated equally. If Michelle Rhee were the benevolent dictator of teaching worldwide, teachers would no longer be guaranteed tenure, and inadequate teaching would quickly lead to one’s dismissal. If you ask me, it sounds like Rhee wants to run America’s school systems like a crafty Silicon Valley startup. I like!
Bureaucratic stupidity
Unfortunately, unlike the typical Silicon Valley startup, Washington D.C.’s public school system has a lot of red tape. Just think about it: If you ran your school like a good CEO, you’d have to deal with nagging parents who hate you because you fired a “nice and caring teacher”, regardless as to how much s/he failed at educating your child. You’d have to deal with the teachers, and they’d get the union involved. Think about it: “Experienced” teachers losing their tenures, and even their jobs! Of course they’re all outraged. But it needs to be known that by not dismissing crappy teachers, we’re indirectly performing a crime against humanity.
America’s future leaders are being left behind in grade school, and they’ll have a hard time catching up if even ONE bad teacher is given the chance to negatively influence their life. Research conducted by Stanford researcher Eric Hanushek suggested that a child with a top notch teacher (85%tile in quality) will be scoring well above grade level on standardized tests, while those with bad teachers will be almost a year and a half below grade level, and will probably never catch up. If teachers have that much impact on a child’s life, there must be a way to cut through the red tape and make some serious reform.
Stupid people turn smart people stupid
The effective teacher cringes at the idea of working side by side with a crappy teacher. In some cases, the crappy teacher is being paid more AND has tenure! This sends a terrible message to both effective teachers and aspiring educators. Good teachers will realize that the expectations of them are sub-par at best. Aspiring educators are scared that their teaching will have no effect on young children, only because bad teachers are giving the educational community a bad rap. Teachers who are interested in working at a school that employs crappy teachers will be turned away, thus leading to the hire of only more crappy teachers. * le sigh *
“I like to think about our public schools as… a lucrative enterprise”
This sounds terrible to say, but I love the idea of treating our school systems as a faltering business that needs a little face lift. Principals act as CEOs, teachers act as employees, and our children act as our theoretical customers. Only that in this case, if schools fail to provide a good service, our entire nation suffers equally as much as the customer does. So let’s change the perspective a little… if you were the principal of a school that just so happened to be a for-profit enterprise, what would you do?
If I ran a school, I’d be in constant contact with my customers (students) to figure out what’s needs improvement in the classroom. Back when I was in public high school (which didn’t last very long for many obvious reasons), my principal had the nerve to tell my mom that I was helping run ratemyteacher.com, the website notorious for encouraging young students to speak their mind! My principal thought that ratemyteacher.com was “unfair and mean to bad teachers…” And I’m thinking, “well… uh….. THAT’S THE ENTIRE POINT!” Students were happy to voice their opinions, whether they be 5 star ratings for good teachers or 1 star ratings for crappy ones. In my experience, bad teacher ratings were a pretty good indicator of the teacher’s crappiness. If I was the principal, I’d probably have students fill out evaluations that allowed students to give feedback on their teacher, based on some thought-out critera. Most colleges and universities do it. Why shouldn’t elementary schools, too?
Assuming that you’re a good CEO/principal, you’d ONLY hire good teachers. Unlike most schools, yours would have a zero tolerance for mediocrity. You’ll have a continuous feedback cycle with students to figure out how you can improve. Parents would do anything to send their child to your school! When principals decide to stop funding the retirements of shoddy teachers who I’d rather be jobless, the outlook on our children’s futures might just hold promise. 
Update: (12/26) There are so many different perspectives on this topic… none can be confirmed right or wrong, but it’s important to look at every view. My friend Joël sent me a link to a speech made by John Gatto, who suggests that “the U.S. educational system cranks out students the way Detroit cranks out Buicks.” Students are programmed to contend to norms rather than taught how to think.
Many of my blog readers have asked me why I left high school early to attend Simon’s Rock, the Early College. There’s a difference between being “taught” and being “educated”, and unfortunately, my public high school taught me uselessness instead of teaching me how to think. While teachers like John Gatto believe that the public education system is broken beyond repair, others suggest that change can happen when the focus is more on teaching than on pleasing parents, satisfying teachers, and preserving teacher unions.
Fact is, this is an incredibly complicated topic that I claim absolutely no expertise on. Even the so-called “experts” have only so much influence on fixing the system. In John Gatto’s teacher of the year acceptance speech, he said, “we need to realize that the school institution “schools” very well, but it does not “educate” — that’s inherent in the design of the thing. It’s not the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent, it’s just impossible for education and schooling ever to be the same thing.”
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