It’s widely acknowledged that the U.S. education system is a mess. It was, arguably, designed to train people for an industrial society – a society that no longer exists. Most people admit that some type of reform is needed, although there’s little consensus on what is right. However, lots of people are doing great things in education – and I’m confident that the system can be fixed (but it ain’t going to be easy).
Here are a couple of recent themes/articles outlining some of the great things that are being done in education today:
- Teacher accountability. It’s widely acknowledged that, on average, the quality of teachers is the single biggest determinant of a student’s success. The trick is rewarding good teachers and punishing bad ones. Michelle Rhee in D.C. proposes higher salaries for great teachers. In NYC, Joel Klein uses the Rubber Room to get bad teachers away from students.
- Community involvement. Greet Dot is “transforming” underperforming LA schools, in part by requiring that all parents provide 35 hours a year of volunteer work at the school. You don’t send your kids to a Green Dot school, you’re part of it too.
- Online education. Hot off the presses: online education outperforms traditional, face-to-face education. What makes this so exciting is that this space is likely only going to get better. As tools like IM, wikis, etc. get folded into all online learning experiences we’re going to see even better results (a lot of the successful studies reference in the article are from late ’90s/early ’00s and don’t reflect newer technologies)
- Emphasizing learning: High Tech High and Roxbury Prep are schools that work hard to ensure that no one is made fun of for learning. Combine this with rewards for learning (e.g., public recognition of good grades) and fun team projects and you’ve got a supportive environment that generates great people.
Two interesting themes arise here: a) the most interesting stuff is happening at charter schools (the “startups” of the education world?) and b) if you want better schools you’re on a collision course with the union. I’m hoping some of these memes go national soon.
Update (Oct 20, 2009):
Another interesting program reported on by FastCompany: in North Carolina, kids were given smart phones to make and share movies about how they solved math problems. This also provided after hours access to their math teacher. Net result: pilot group had higher algebra scores than the non-pilot group plus every student had a 100% proficiency rating (vs. 70% for those not in pilot).