Improving Public Education - More is better

This discussion of education is based on the following assumptions.

1.     Democracy should afford its citizens equality of opportunity.

2.     Education, both historically and actually, is a vehicle – probably the principle vehicle for democracy to afford equality of opportunity.

3.     Financial status affords middle class and wealthy students material and cultural advantages that tend to tilt the playing field in their favor.

4.     Changes in the way we educate our children can provide better outcomes for everyone[1] and at the same time help to level playing field for the socially and economically disadvantaged. That said, I am going to principally focus on leveling the playing field. At the end I will make some comments on how this specifically may help the more materially advantaged classes.

As noted in A Framework for Understanding Poverty people are poor in more ways than a lack of money. These include deficiencies in emotional resources, knowledge resources, spiritual resources, support systems, and role models. In addition, people living in poverty learn hidden rules that help them survive in poverty but are different than the hidden rules of the middle class and keep them from moving up the socioeconomic ladder.

I would contend that school can provide these non-financial resources and provide an environment to learn the hidden rules of the class they aspire to but only if children start younger and go to school for more hours/day and more days/year. That would mean children would start school at age three, have a 9-5 school day, and go at least 200 days per year with no school break longer than 3 to 4 weeks.

The model for this can be found in KIPP schools. These are publicly funded K-12 charter schools. Their typical school day is 7:30 to 4:00. Because they are publicly funded they operate on the public school calendar although they offer summer school. Nearly 90% of their students are poor [2] but perform academically at or above grade level when compared with conventional public schools[3]. I would suggest starting this model for preschool, starting the school day later for health and academic reasons[4], and extending the school year to avoid summer learning loss[5].

The principle object of these extended hours days and years is provide an immersion experience in literally an alternative culture from the culture of poverty so that poor children can successfully move out of poverty and into the middle class and possibly beyond.

Of course, if the academic quality of those extended hours, days, and years of schooling is subpar then expanding this time will be a waste of it. That quality will depend on the quality of the methods, the teachers, and the curriculum. I know nothing of teaching methods and close to nothing about teacher standards or curriculum. However, with respect to the latter two I would like to suggest some parameters and I will do that in my next entry. 

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[1] The United States is below average in math and about average in reading and science compared to 34 OECD countries https://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/PISA-2012-results-US.

[2] http://www.kipp.org/results/national/#question-1:-who-are-our-students

[3] http://www.kipp.org/results/national/#question-3:-are-our-students-progressing-and-achieving-academically

[4] https://www.cdc.gov/features/school-start-times/index.html

[5] Summer learning loss is the phenomenon that students regress and lose up to a month of learning after the 10-week summer vacation. This is especially true of socioeconomically disadvantaged students. https://www.brookings.edu/research/summer-learning-loss-what-is-it-and-what-can-we-do-about-it/