We’re looking at public education as a cost and not an opportunity. All the cost-cutting rhetoric is as hollow as the swirl of nonsense around cutting the cost of government. Cost is a function of value, so to reduce cost we must improve results.
We’re obsessed with money rather than ideas. Cost-cutting, either in government services or in education without agreement on desired outcomes and how to measure them, will be pointless.
I attended public schools in Vermont for eight years and private schools for eight more, including UVM. I taught in public school here for two years. I’ve had four children transit our school systems.
I’d start by re-aligning the education and labor calendars. The current design for both the legislature and the school system is based on agriculture. Children were needed in the summer for farm work. Their parent-farmers had to convene the legislature in winter when their snow-covered fields lay fallow. It’s time to remake these calendars to reflect changes in the workplace and in society, remembering that 70% of mothers have now entered the workforce.
Here’s my vision. Schools should open at 8 AM and remain open until 5 PM. They’d serve a healthy breakfast and lunch to students on a need or paid basis. Classes would occur throughout the day. Quiet time for assisted homework completion and reading would be in the schedule, as would morning and afternoon open recess periods.
Public schools would be open to students from two to sixteen years. Graduation would occur at sixteen. Qualifying kids could enter college at sixteen. Kids needing additional remedial time could take up to two years more before entering college or a craft academy. The 1700 private day care providers would be integrated into the system, eliminating their overhead costs. They would be paid as the professionals they are or would become. Daycare would simply become education.
School facilities would stay local to contain transportation costs, but their utility would increase. They’d be open and in session year-round, integrating other community administrative functions like board meeting rooms, town clerks, libraries, senior centers and police facilities into their overheads for efficiency. Our schools would become a cost-efficient town centers.
Administrative functions would be centralized statewide for further cost-efficiency while education would remain in and accountable to its local community and to statewide outcomes. Centralized admin would include a statewide teacher’s contract, purchasing, accounting, and data processing.
Teachers would have 4-week paid vacations like the rest of the professional labor force. Parents could opt their kids out of school for any two months or for a publicly-funded semester abroad.
Structured education would begin formally at the age of three when the physiology of the brain is at its most formative and receptive for learning. Curriculum design would reflect developing vocational, professional, academic or cultural career interests.
An educated citizenry and workforce is our only real strategy for civil and economic success. We have the opportunity to lead, but have we the will?
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