$250 Billion of Action Research

According to U.S. Department of Education statistics, over 2.5 million students currently attend low performing public schools across the nation.

I’ve been in my share of low performing schools. Most of them aren’t nice places to be. Toxic in fact. Some raise moral and ethical questions about why we continue to expect black, brown, and poor families to send their kids to places like these.

Let’s figure we spend approximately $10,000 per year of taxpayer dollars on each of those 2.5 million students. That’s probably low-balling it, given the number of needy students attending these schools. The annual amount spent on young learners each year would be approximately $250 billion.

That’s a lot of money to invest in failing schools.

But it gets worse. Most of these schools aren’t low performing for one year. They are low performing for decades. Some of the failing schools that were part of an urban school district I joined as a teacher in 1984 were still failing schools when I left that district as a region superintendent in 2008. So, we continue to spend $250 billion, or more, on the same schools year in and year out.

Doesn’t make sense, does it?

Maybe there’s a better way to spend this kind of money.

Here are some ideas on how the United States could proceed with a different plan, so that all these young learners, trapped inside failing public schools, might have the chance at a better learning future:

1. Lobby Congress and state legislators to adopt a national plan for action research, to see if money can be spent in a more effective way for all young learners currently assigned to traditional low performing schools.

• Dedicate some of the $250 billion to parent education, so that parents and other caretakers can become more aware of what possibilities are out there for their children.

• Spend some of the $250 billion on recruiting, training, and compensating adult learning leaders – let’s call them learning coaches. Learning Coach University would focus on making sure adult learning leaders knew how to build a learning plan for each of their young learns, complete with learning goals, the identification of appropriate learning resources (both online and not), and assessment practices focused on feedback, practice, more feedback, and more practice. Learning Coach University would also train adult learning leaders on budgeting an annual year of learning based on 20-25 young learner needs. Adult learning leaders interested in a generalist designation would receive training in reading, writing, problem-solving, and character development. Adult learning leaders interested in a specialist designation would receive training in subjects like calculus, physics, creative writing, performing and fine arts, foreign language, work study skills, and athletics.

• Spend some of the $250 billion on a process, driven by the same type of algorithm used in other fields to pair up workers, whereby adult learning leaders and young learners, along with their families, are matched according to their interests and passions.

• Spend some of the $250 billion on making sure learning occurs 24/7 for all the young learners included in an adult learning coach’s cohort.

I’m sure naysayers, like my wife, who tells me continually this model can’t be scaled to meet the needs of all young learners, will say this is pie-in-the-sky dreaming by a retired public school educator who desperately wants to change the system he worked in for nearly 40 years.

For all those naysayers, including my wife, I say this:

What do we have to lose? Most of these kids will stay in sucky schools (what we used to call low performing schools when I was working in public education) for their entire K-12 experience. It’s not like kids move from a sucky school to an exemplary one, and then back to a sucky one.

Most kids in poverty stay in low performing schools throughout their public school career.

We know the schools we have provided these poverty kids aren’t working, and they haven’t worked for years and years.

So let’s do a little action research – national style.

Set up a national learning center to lead this movement. Give families the choice to leave their sucky school and enroll in a learning cohort sponsored by the national center. Allow adult learning leaders to be recruited, receive training, and earn compensation for committing to this new and exciting type of learning. Empower young learners, through the support of their learning coaches and their families, to build their own learning plans with the overall goal of each young learner being able to own their own learning moving forward.

Let’s commit to this action research – national style – for 15 years. Let’s compare reading, writing, and problem-solving achievement from those young learners that chose to leave their under-performing schools with those who decided to stay put. Let’s see if a new pathway is a better pathway.

They only thing we lose is $250 billion a year, oh, and a generation of kids.

Til tomorrow. SVB