Education and why it needs to change

When I won the Puget Sound Business Journal’s 40 under 40 award last year I answered a bunch of mostly casual, mostly silly questions around various aspects of my philosophy and life. I will openly admit that I didn’t think too much about my answers… I neglected the deadline for when they were due until the last minute and then moved through them quickly to get them done. Looking back now I realize that I actually did a better job than I thought in capturing how I felt about things… my big flaw is that I was light on details and didn’t cross the chasm to what led to my way of thinking.

Generally speaking my answers were innocuous. The one I feared would have the most scrutiny (“I want to go start and do my own thing, my own company at some point soon”) didn’t get the anger I worried it would. As with most things I was surprised by the pieces that caught the imagination most, which in the case of the interview questions were my feelings on education.

My father worked in education for his career, and veered toward low income, impoverished school systems. That eventually brought him to the Bureau of Indian Affairs school system on the Navajo reservation. There he worked to bring up school systems, curriculum and educational standards in a part of the country where most people had clearly given up all hope. The reservations are by and a large a refuge where people are forgotten… there is no comparison in the country right now for a ethnicity of people who are completely and absolutely ignored by the collective culture than our Native Americans. Yes, they receive Government funding… but the reservation itself is an embarrassment of poverty where children do not have even the most basic services… it’s the third world existing within our borders. A government check that funds a brand new pickup truck and gas money to drive 60 miles to the nearest Walmart exists… but the infrastructure and basic decency to have paved roads, running water and electricity isn’t.

During the last several Presidencies I’ve listened to ideas proposed around basic education and the concept of leaving no child behind. It’s a nice thought, but when you’ve got children who have to go to school to get a shower then the idea of bridging the technology gap is absolutely ludicrous. Is there a technology gap in the schools? Absolutely there is… and it’s bigger and wider than anyone realizes. It also can’t be filled by shipping 500 laptops to the nearest trading post and hoping for the best… which is largely what our government is doing. I’ve seen brand new Apple computers used to prop open windows and doors because the Hogan living structure doesn’t have power. Maybe the child can wander out and plug in his or her new computer to the gas-powered generator and sit on the dirt breathing fumes while they search for the Internet… but not likely.

I find the state of education in our country to be abysmal… years of watching my father bang his head against the wall only depressed me about our efforts to make things better. Watching unions valiantly defend unqualified, uneducated teachers or school systems conduct the elaborate “dance of the lemons” (a process in which poor teachers are passed around from school district to school district rather than be fired for incompetence due to their union membership) taught me that for all our talk about reforming and improving education we aren’t really serious about it. There are certainly good, passionate teachers out there. They deserve our support, better pay, and all the accolades in the world. There are also a collection of miserable people who have no business being around children at all and should join the workforce of McDonalds as soon as humanly possible. Not all teachers deserve our support. Blanket support does nothing to help students who need it or teachers who try hard but are held back by their peers.

The wealthy Bellevue, Washington school district is able to afford new computers and technology for students, and parents tied to Microsoft are certain to provide whatever items they can donate. They are not found wanting and their students receive what they need to prepare them for the future. Not so if you go to several Seattle schools… bad news for you because from a technology perspective you’re screwed. Your schools are not popular enough to receive the kinds of charity that their neighbors on the Eastside get, and maybe… just maybe the funding your school gets is being put to good use from a technology perspective but more likely it’s being used to repair buses, roads and fix basic problems that the school needs to do to just run.

If you’re over the mountains in some small, rural town struggling to get basic funding? Your options are incredibly grim.

Every state has similar problems, but they aren’t being solved by the current system. A smarter, better approach is needed that really puts the needs of the students… and more importantly what happens to them when they leave school… first. It can’t protect bad teachers as a necessary sacrifice to reward good ones. It can’t spend money foolishly or poorly. It isn’t a race issue unless you take into account that all the races are hurting… not all at the same level but certainly with enough equivalency that the problem has to be fixed holistically and not for one group over another.

Nationally, 30% of students drop out of High School. Maybe that isn’t a problem if those students are joining the economy in other ways and able to lead productive, meaningful lives aligned to their interests.

But we know that isn’t the case. The gap we are creating is only widening, and our efforts to solve it are based on political and personal expediency and the desire to want to appear like we’re doing something… not actually making meaningful progress. Why else would you send a new computer to someone without running water or electricity? Why else would you dump funding into a school system without good guidance of how to use it? Why else would you create a system that protects bad teachers at the expense of good ones… and the students they teach?

No arguments from me: teachers are one of our most valuable resources. It’s time to start treating them that way, and that’s not by creating a system designed to hold a status quo at best and fail miserably at worst. Just like every other job in the world, people like to work in an environment where they think they can win. We’ve got to respect our teachers and our students enough to provide them that environment.