If we want to fix education then we need to start asking the people that know the most and care most.”
If we want to fix education then we need to start asking the people that know the most and care most.”
As a math professor and teacher, I have seen these problems first hand at local schools. And like most issues, the solution lies in getting people to work together and start communicating. In education, that means local educators, students, parents, and classified staff members are the experts and they know better than anyone else what the real problems are and how to come up with real solutions. In addition, these same groups are best equipped to identify the unintended consequences of a bad policy.
As a teacher, I never start a semester without a well-thought out syllabus and work plan. It should be the same with education as a whole. Before we even attempt to re-start education reform, let’s start by asking the people who know and care about our schools the most.
Here’s our first lesson plan:
Create Educational Community Coalitions
These panels should be made up of teachers, administrators, parents, students and classified employees. Instead, of setting policy top-down, these coalitions would be responsible for making changes to current policies, working with local school boards to adjust policies and lobby the state legislature on policy and budget priorities. For instance, if they recognized that certain schools elementary schools were graduating superior science students into middle school then the committee could conduct and analysis, and make proper recommendations on curriculum and teaching methods.
The bottom line is that top down policymaking for schools hasn’t worked because it flat out doesn’t work. Can you imagine local educational coalitions voting to cut pre-school or adult school or to make classroom sizes larger? In a global economy, we need to work harder and be smarter to compete. Like they say, “Think globally, act locally!”
