hacking education

I recently applied for Harvard Graduate School of Education’s (HGSE) brand spanking new Ed.L.D. (Doctor of Education Leadership) program.

And was subsequently rejected.

I am learning to conquer and even welcome failure in my life. Fail often. Fail fast. If you aren’t failing, you are not trying hard enough. If you are not failing, you are not learning as fast as you could be.

There were a few ironies to my Harvard application. My stated purpose in education is to stage a coup to overthrow and topple the current regime. To seek that knowhow from the leader of the current establishment is, truly, ironic. That irony was never lost to myself and something I questioned often.  When I was just graduating from high school I wrote in my journal (those are like blogs with poor readership) that my goal was not to attend Harvard but to become the Harvard of the next generation. There would have been great irony to Harvard issuing a diploma to the force that will one day come to overthrow it.

And I do intend to be part of the force that brings the Harvard dynasty to an end.

That said, I harbor no ill feelings for Harvard. It is the very best of the current education system. It was a recent pioneer in the financing of middle-class students among many other great strides. It has created a model for elite, sustainable education. It is the best of what we currently have to offer.

But it is the leader of a system that, at large, is failing America. Harvard’s stated purpose for this new Ed.L.D. program is to train the leaders to fix America’s K-12 education system. With that as their stated purpose, I believe that Harvard has already failed.

How do I know? From the social streams.

The premise of my argument rests on this distinction. In 100 years who will the history “books” (“books” because in 100 years “books” will not be the storage unit of knowledge) mention: Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, or Arne Duncan, the most powerful US Secretary of Education in the history of our nation?  It is my predication, that Arne Duncan will have been long forgotten and lost from our national memory and that Jimmy Wales will be enthroned as the grandfather and pioneer of “modern” education.

I like Arne Duncan. But there is little that he is doing that even matters.  Tweaking our broken system will yield little. Pouring billions into broken districts and states systems will change little. Arne Duncan has been charged with fixing the Encyclopedia Britannica. His reform is only as radical as to fire the old writers, hire new and improved writers, and pay them on a different model.  When all the while we slowly usher in the era of an wiki-model education.

(I support most everything Arne is up to and think it will make the current system better. That is in no way my argument. The argument is that it really doesn’t matter. The goal shouldn’t be to make the horse buggy any better than it already is when Model T’s are starting to come off the line).

My hope was that Harvard would have had the wisdom to identify the change that is upon us and be the pioneers in training the leaders that would take us boldly into a new era. To realize that training and leaders were needed for a system that doesn’t yet exist. To step into the dark and begin to imagine what is next and take risks on how we can get there as a nation. Instead, they picked out leaders to drive the last efficiencies from our current system, to slow the inevitable change, and to train the current establishment’s last generation of leaders.

My proof. The social streams.

The internet is the greatest learning tool ever invented. It is the backbone and infrastructure upon which the new education will be built. The leaders of the new education will rise from the ranks of the internet, the blog sphere, the twitterverse. The internet is the most powerful agent for change and the change agents will be those who know the tool well enough to envision how it can fix and solve our dilemmas. How it can serve us, teach us, and educate us. 

By their fruits ye shall know them. Or in our case, their online, social profile. Their online stream. Their online community.

Getting into the HGSE program is a life changing event—by any standards—and would have been the primary topic of interest for anyone who got in. Anyone who leads, participates, or engages online would have left a digital footprint of this event. A blog post, a facebook post, a twitter post, to announce and celebrate this success. And yet, there has not been a single mention online by any of the admitted class of their success in getting in.

I have tried smart queries using a variety of key words on google, facebook, twitter and elsewhere. I have gone weeks back in the histories. I have checked deep into the SERPs. Nothing.

Without knowing a single person that Harvard picked, I know Harvard failed. Not because of who these people are, but because of who they are not. They are not leaders in the new education. The new education has already started, the force that will fix American education, and all 25 of Harvard’s picks are absent from roll call.   

(download)

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Harvards_Failure_The_New_Educa.zip (116 KB)

The Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) recently announced the creation of a new degree: Doctor of Educational Leadership.

This program is interdisciplinary, with coursework coming from HGSE, the Harvard Business School, and the Kennedy School. The program is three years—the first two spent in course work and the third year spent in residency with a partner program. There are some pieces with great explanations and quotes regarding the program. Here are a few:

•  AP on MSNBC
• Harvard Gazette
• NYTimes

I first heard about the new programs in September and decided that I wasn’t going to let the grass grow on this opportunity. From a cold start I began busting the GRE skills and got signed up for a Nov 24 test date.

Man. Nothing will reinforce a conviction in reforming education that having to take another high stakes standardized test. In the end I scored 570 (80 percentile) on the Verbal, 770 (87 percentile) on the Quant and a 5.5 (92 percentile) on the Analytical Writing.  The score was a mixed surprise—I had been scoring just shy of 700 on the Verbal in pretests and low 600s on the Quant in pretests.  Ha. Brings back my memories of the ACT, which I took 4 times, never scoring higher that a 31 cumulatively, though over the course of the four times taking the test, managed to score a 35 on every section of the test—just never consistently.

I had the thought, though, that I would like to share my two short (400 word) essays that I submitted as part of the application.   They are below, with the prompts.

Describe a situation in which you changed your opinion/view on a particular topic or issue.

I am the primary administrator of Zinch.com’s scholarship programs.  To date, I have awarded over $200,000 in scholarships to students. 

I used to love it. 

I used to love creating the programs. I used to love reading applications. And I used to especially love making the phone call to students to let them know they’d won.

I used to…

But my outlook has changed in recent months. I used to believe I was helping do my part in overcoming the rising cost of higher education.

I was wrong. I have come to understand that while scholarships are a blessing to the recipient they have an inflationary affect on the cost of education for others.

The consequences of the rising costs of higher education are monstrous and private scholarships feed the monster. It is Econ 101; supply vs. demand.  Varying prices determine the level of supply and demand for any product and education is no different. Assuming price elasticity, when the price is high, supply is high. When the price is low, demand is high. The actual amount of education produced is where the equilibrium of supply equals demand.

Third party scholarships are a form of subsidy. Subsidies increase demand at the equilibrium price. In a market that can quickly scale, an increase in demand is met with an increase in production and an increase in price, until equilibrium is again met. Traditional education does not easily scale. Physicality constrains it—the number of chairs in buildings, buildings on campuses, total number of campuses. Therefore, the increase in demand cannot be met with the usual increase in supply. This leaves unmet demand. Unmet demand results in diminished need for efficiencies and innovation as well as the ability to artificially inflate tuition rates.

Believing that they are allaying the problem of rising tuition, scholarship providers only help inflate the problem. They feed the monster.

Scholarships enable tuition hikes. Even so, higher education still yields a positive return on investment for the majority of its graduates. However, tuition hikes do not affect all equally. There are those who, while knowing education’s positive return, don't have the capital to start, or to finish, the process of a four-year degree. It is not that the economics don't work; it is that they don't work for everyone. With each hike in tuition, someone gets left behind.

And so… for those deserving students we create another scholarship…

Describe an idea (yours or someone else's) that you believe could significantly improve education. How would it change education?

Idea: A “draft-market” system for teachers’ selection of students, merit-based pay, and need-based allocation of teaching resources.

Premise: K-12. Assume a framework of regular standardized tests.  Students may advance through tests at any schedule.

Selection of Students: On regular schedules, teachers draft their students in rounds. Four key indicators indentify each student: their Level—the number of tests they have passed; Rank—the percentile in which they score; Special Considerations—such as any learning disabilities, handicaps, etc.; and, Resource Points.

Merit-based Pay: The advancements in Rank and gains/losses in Level that individual students make determine the teachers’ pay. This is based on a scaled schedule that accounts for both the entrance Rank of the student and any Special Considerations. For example, gains made by a student entering in the 60th percentile would initially pay at a higher rate than those for a student entering at the 90th percentile.

Resource Allocation: Resource Points are the currency teachers use to purchase teaching resources. Resource Points are equitably allotted to each student with additional Resource Points for Special Considerations. After each round of the draft, all unclaimed students are given an additional Resource Point, thus allocating resources to the more difficult students.

This efficiently allocates resources across diverse students.  Students deemed “difficult” are passed initially then, round after round, build an allocation of Resource Points until the Points are sufficient to offset any challenges and the student is drafted.

The Implications: Assume open parameters regarding several classroom norms: class sizes as small as three and as large as hundreds; teachers that specialize by Level, Rank, and/or Special Consideration; teachers that progress through Levels with their students; teachers that form partnerships or groups.

For students, this creates a system that incentives customized teaching and ensures that they are allocated the resources needed for success.

For teachers, this creates a flexible system that allows them to specialize and work with a subset of students in which they can have the largest impact. 

The outcome would be a system where teachers would be allowed to specialize and target their draft picks.  For example, one teacher may find their strengths lie in helping many advanced students accelerate quickly through the Levels while another teacher finds that they can help fewer struggling students make large percentile gains in the Ranks with more individual attention.  Using a scaled pay schedule gives teachers in both scenarios financial upside and incentives.