Despite the efforts of many of our best minds and hearts, education policy has become too trendy, too muddled and too political. When it comes to running a hospital, or building a road, or growing crops, most politicians understand that
Despite the efforts of many of our best minds and hearts, education policy has become too trendy, too muddled and too political.
When it comes to running a hospital, or building a road, or growing crops, most politicians understand that their role is to provide funding and basic oversight, and get out of the way, letting experts do their job. But because of our special passion for public education, we find politicians involved in almost every aspect of education at nearly every level.
They specify teaching methods, program design and the allocation of resources from school to school. They get excited about the latest curriculum design, or accountability system, and try to impose it.
From Congress and the Board of Education to the governor and the Legislature, we have an education system that spends too much of its time either explaining itself or responding to a new “policy” or “reform” proposed by politicians.
It’s time to change our basic approach from one of scattershot political oversight to a sober-minded focus on what has already been proven to work. Here are my suggestions:
Remember that governance is a secondary issue.
We have spent more than a decade debating the size, structure and authority of the Board of Education. Gov. Cayetano wanted to change it from an elected to an appointed board. Gov. Lingle wanted lots of school boards. Others wanted to give them taxing authority. But if you ask most educators, they usually shrug their shoulders and tell you that the structure of the board will have little impact on the quality of the teaching in the classrooms.
The governance issue is a distraction, but it continues politics and political structures are easy and interesting to understand and discuss. But the challenges in our education system reside in the classroom, and will be solved in the classroom. A dozen boards or zero, it always comes down to quality teaching.
Let’s do the things that we know for sure will work.
Universal preschool will improve student performance. Studies show that children who have attended preschool arrive in elementary school better prepared academically and socially, and thrive more than their counterparts. Those trajectories hold all the way through high school, so an investment in universal preschool is money well spent.
Improved educator training will help.
The quality of the teaching in the classroom is the single most important predictor of educational success, and there are now agreed-upon best practices that will help our teachers to deliver the best education. We ought to invest resources in training our teachers so that they can improve their product.
Additional instruction time is good for students.
This is so simple that very few people mention it. While a diverse experience for our students is important, the more services that our schools deliver to our students, the better. Whether it is music, or art or dance, reading or leadership, the more time our teachers spend in actual instruction and guidance, the more our kids will achieve. This means that teachers and administrators need to be given fewer mandates by the state and federal government allowing them to focus on what matters.
There are straightforward solutions to our educational challenges, but they will require a new level of discipline and focus. We can’t intervene every time the political situation looks tempting, and we have to remain focused not on what sounds exciting, but what we already know will improve education.
• Brian Schatz is the chair of the Hawai‘i Democratic Party.
