Hacking Public Education

I fail to see how this is a hack. A hack suggests some sort of unexpectedly clever solution, often simple, that solves a specific problem.

The failure of the American educational system is not a specific problem.

Having worked for a newspaper on the education beat for a number of years and covered an uncountable number of asinine school board meetings, I can honestly tell you that what works in Colorado may not work in other states in the union.

Now for the HN cop-out. I'm not against increasing funding for education, nor increased accountability and power for teachers. These are all great things. But there's a rotten core to our philosophy of education in this country that will never be solved by the government or any legal requirements for anything.

Small, focused charter schools or aggressive home schooling are the only real ways I can see to truly revolutionize the state of education. But those two are so amazing unpalatable or unpractical for the vast majority of cases that personally I'm stumped.

Really, if we're all going to be honest, what's going to change this is parental involvement. Daisy is not the majority of kids (referenced in the OP), she is an amazing exception and I hope the school system doesn't fail her. But the bigger issue is the teacher-student apathy to learning cycle. And that starts with parents who WANT their children to succeed and who understand how to help their children learn and achieve their goals. In the absence of that, no money in the world will produce successful children.

As a former middle school science teacher in a low income school I believe the author has this wrong. The education system has so many complex issues that throwing more money at it or "adjusting a teacher-tenure framework" is not revolutionary and should not be praised. There are many districts who have taken these steps already including the one I previously worked at.

IMHO, there is no silver bullet, but there needs to focus on welfare, poverty, and long-term investments in our society. Better welfare support, pre-natal support, etc. In terms of teaching there needs to be a dramatic cultural shift in how we view teachers which can happen only through increased barrier to entry and more autonomy.

I was shocked as to how terrible teachers were treated and viewed and how so many people have it so wrong when it comes to education, which is why I left the profession to become a software engineer. It is one of the few professions where everyone seems to be an expert on and knows solutions for the industry as a whole without ever being a part of it from the side of a teacher or administrator.

The number one factor affecting education outcomes isn't teacher salaries, tenure, or education budgets. It's parent involvement (see http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED375968 for an overview of some of the many studies showing this). Simply put, children whose parents take an active role on their education easily outperform children whose parents treat public education as free daycare. Thus, throwing more money at schools and teachers will at best solve only a few of the challenges public education faces. It would be better if some of that money and effort was redirected toward promoting more parental involvement in each child's education.

How exactly is throwing more gasoline on a fire ($1 billion is a lot of gasoline) a magical fix for the education problem??

What about trying something different, like deregulation? (ex: less administrative oversight, less union power, let teachers do their things their own way, make it easier to fire them if they don't perform)

>You can’t address public education unless you address the fundamental problems with how we hire, pay, promote, and fire the teacher

The problem with all these reform policies is that they are focused on the teacher. Teachers are at the bottom of the barrel in the education world. They can't choose the books, schedules, punishment, or much of anything in the class room. They are even told what to teach regardless of the abilities of there students.

How about the principals, directors of curriculum, various specialist, and all the rest of the "other" people in education.

"Florida students have demonstrated the strongest gains on the NAEP in the nation since 2003, when all 50 states began taking NAEP exams. Moreover, between 1998 and 2008, the average score for black students increased by 12 points in reading from 192 to 204. In Florida, it increased by 25 points—twice the gains of the national average. If African American students nationwide had made the same amount of progress as African American students in Florida, the fourth-grade reading gap between black and white would be approximately half the size it is today."

http://educationnext.org/florida-defeats-the-skeptics/ http://blog.heritage.org/2011/04/02/florida-education-reform...

I don't know how is is now, but in 1970, Colorado had one school system per county, with the schools within a system having the same level of funding. Even within a system, there could be a dramatic difference between high schools. In Denver, TJ seemed to be the best school, followed probably by South; Manual had not escaped the legacy of being the vocational school. In Jefferson County, I think that the hierarchy ran something like Wheatridge, Bear Creek, Golden, Arvada. And kids at the same school could get very different educations based on family background and even individual motivation.

But I wish them luck.

As a Coloradan student, I've discussed Amendment 66 with some teachers, and there are a lot more underlying effects of it that harm the system. Take pay-for-performance for example. What if the teacher teaches a subject where the student inherently lacks motivation? Another less obvious issue is that if too many teachers are reported to perform well, they get audited whether or not the performance review is accurate. In such a scenario, you're job and salary is safer if you perform average and not get audited at all rather than perform excellent and risk suspicion and auditing.

Here's why this needs to pass: we need bold changes, and we won't know what works until we try it. So here's a bold plan, which seems to work on paper. I wish Pennsylvania would try something like this, or at least something better than the "slash public education funding" plan.

All three "hacks" mentioned appear to involve spending more money. Unless the money is spent differently than it currently is, I don't see how this changes anything from the students perspective.

I don't see this as hacking anything.