Contributors
jonathan woahn
david blake
the "System"
I recently applied for the Bay Area EdTech Entrepreneurs, sponsored by Teach For America, New School Venture Fund, and Stanford's Institute of Design. As part of the application they asked us to answer a few questions.
What do you see as the biggest challenge facing our public education system? (300 Words)
Given I am constrained to 300 words I am tempted to answer—teachers.
Nothing challenges the system more than bad teachers. McKinsey and Co. in their 2007 “How the World’s Best Schools Systems Stay on Top” identified that America’s teachers come from the bottom third of their graduating class, that the world’s best systems hire from the top third, and that students’ educational attainment cannot rise above the quality of the teachers.
But I won’t give to the temptation to settle my answer there.
An invention from the dawning of the industrial era, our public education system serves the needs demanded of industrial times. An exponential explosion of innovation has occurred. Currently, the output of the education system and the demands of the technology era are so at odds that the stress is at a breaking point.
We are on the cusp of an educational revolution.
The problems that need to be solved to usher in the new era of American education are not the same as the current system’s biggest challenges.
The new system needs plumbing. Technology innovation has been facilitated by the basis of conventions and protocols. Similarly, the new education system needs a way for fast pace change to be brought about in an organized way that is meaningful to all and that can continue to be built upon. The groundwork—or plumbing—is required. The most important of these include:
- Accreditation. We need a system that can accommodate new schools faster.
- Interoperability. We need a system that accommodates many inputs from many sources.
- Economics. Knowledge is so easily shared now that its cost should be driven increasingly lower.
The Geography of Education
I believe that the geography of education is going to be disrupted by online learning.
Prior to the internet, education geographically centered around human capital—the teacher.
Elementary school teachers are the broadest generalists and university professors the deepest specialists. As the curriculum advances, finding teachers for the increasingly specialized topics becomes increasingly challenging.
The geographic placement and size of schools reflect this structural pyramid. Because there are more generalists than specialists, there are more elementary schools than middle schools; more middle schools than high schools; more high schools than colleges. We localized teachers to make it as convenient as possible for large populations of people to access and learn from them.
At the elementary school level this has meant creating many easily accessible schools in the community. At the university level this has meant creating campuses with dorms to attract interested students from around the world to come and learn at the feet of the professor.
The internet is bringing 24/7, worldwide access to the world’s best teachers and soon the structural pyramid will begin to change. Access to the best the world has to offer is a powerful proposition and will begin to change the role local “teachers” play. In time, students will hear virtual lectures from the world’s best teachers, while local “teachers” evolve into facilitators for on-site feedback and mentoring.
As local teachers begin to fulfill this new role where deep knowledge is less of a necessity, the need to geographically centralize schools to pool the scarce human capital resources will no longer be required. It is my prediction that education, elementary through higher ed, will continue to localize and get smaller; smaller cohorts will get together to interact and learn with each other as they listen virtually from distant teachers.
edu's lack of a marketplace
It is interesting to see the plethora of test prep startups. There are dozens. And a lot of them are really good.
This is my simple hypothesis....
...Education is ripe for innovation--new learning methods, technology platforms, content delivery, feedback improvements through tailored logic and gaming mechanism, social interaction and learning. And the edupreneurs have struck out to bring these innovations to life.
Problem is, there are no dollars in education, particularly K-12. The only place a vendor can sell their edu wares is in the gap between the K-12 and higher ed.
So they build great products. But these new tools are not used to solve any meaningful problems because there are no paying customers. So instead of bringing due change to the defunct system, all the innovative edu startups are pushed into the one small edu marketplace that exists with dollars flowing through--test prep.
Stats on a broken system
- In New Jersey, the head of the teachers’ union makes more than the President of the United States, raking-in $550,000 per year.
- In Indiana alone, 170,000 students are trapped in chronically underperforming schools.
- New York pays hundreds of teachers salaries of $70,000 to play Scrabble in the now infamous rubber rooms, costing taxpayers $30 million in compensation per year.
- Average per-pupil expenditures exceed $10,000 per year, meaning a child entering kindergarten today can expect to have no less than $120,000 spent on his or her education by the time the child graduates high school.
- Nationally, just 32 percent of fourth graders are proficient in reading.
- Cumulatively, states face a $1 trillion shortfall in under-funded teacher pension liabilities.
- In 28 states, teachers can be fired for not joining a union or paying union fees. While half of teachers consider themselves more conservative than liberal, 95 percent of union dues go to Democrats and left-leaning causes.
- More than 1,700 schools nationwide are labeled as dropout factories, graduating less than 60 percent of their students.
- Only 57 percent of college students graduate within six years.
via The Foundry
meet the student body
- 40% of US undergrads are over the age of 23
- 40% of undergrads are attending a 2 yr institution
- 40% are male
- 50% come from households earning less than $40,000 per year
These and other demographic stats: Chron of Higher Ed
