By Vincent La Iacona
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Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Representative Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D, NJ-09) held a nice press event at Public School 17 in Clifton last week to roll out their idea for education reform: the STRIVE Act. The highlights include some degree of loan forgiveness for teachers who go into early childhood education and low-income school districts along with grants to future teachers to teach in high-demand subjects or low-income schools. In addition, there were subsidies for teacher licensing and certification as well as tax breaks for supplies.
These sound great in principle and, of course, are New Jersey Educational Association (NJEA) and NEA (National Educational Association)-friendly proposals. Who wouldn’t want to our current and future educators get a break after all they go through? Unfortunately, once again government is behind the innovation curve and the STRIVE Act points out many of the flaws of the system. Yet it does nothing to ultimately fix them, instead trying to put a Band-Aid on the problems.
Let’s start with what education is supposed to be. Education was meant to prepare the masses to be responsible citizens of their countries and provide a method for entering the workforce. After all, an educated populace will be able to contribute to the private and public sector of the United States. This idea has been changed over the years and the waters have been muddied somewhat over time. There are subjects, especially at the collegiate level, that have limited usage in the workforce. Real debate needs to surround this issue and, as a scientist myself, I believe knowledge about everything is powerful. People should be free to in the pursuit of esoteric knowledge, but should that be done at the expense of the taxpayer-funded or subsidized services?
Let’s go back to primary education though. The problem now is we’re fitting a round peg into a square hole. There is a great video on YouTube from Next School, an international school in Mumbai, India, that illustrates this point: 6 Problems with Our School System. The problem is our education is teaching children to become good at Industrial Age organizational tasks, such as factory work, and not preparing children for the Information Age. All of this makes perfect sense when you think of where the majority of children in the United States go to school, public school.
The government is invariably behind the curve in many areas and education is no exception. If the education isn’t focused on the traits that work in the Information Age, like autonomy, ingenuity, passion, creativity, and multi-tasking, many students will have to develop these traits in other ways. When you see it from this perspective, it makes sense why science and mathematics aren’t popular subjects in the United States today. Many of the traits listed are integral to higher level science and mathematics. And without allowing students to manifest those traits in school, we attempt to obliterate that spirit due to the Industrial Age system we have. It should be expected it will be difficult to get teachers into STEM education as a result if we can barely get them into other STEM fields in the United States.
Another issue are low-income public schools. Many in Trenton, but particularly Democrats, have advocated for Abbott school districts, in which more funding goes to failing school districts to attempt to improve their resources and test scores. From a psychological perspective, this makes absolutely zero sense. It is positive reinforcement for failure. Why would a school district ever want to improve if they could get more money for being worse? This shouldn’t be a surprise though. Legislators often fall into the trap of throwing money at the issue instead of looking at the underlying issue.
This is what the STRIVE Act is an attempt to do. It is a throwing money at system that is currently broken. Think of the logic as a teacher. Would you, as a teacher, want to go into an underperforming district and succeed? That’s a no-brainer. That would be life-changing for the teacher and the ultimate reward. But that doesn’t align with the political reality at the highest levels. This paradox is why throwing money at the problem rarely works. Paying for failure leads to more failure.
Another difficultly we commonly see is that public school teachers aren’t encouraged to be creative nor are they encouraged to succeed. There are union pay scales, based on tenure and education level, that change only modestly over time. The only benefit to being an exceptional teacher who is highly creative, engaged, and professional is the ability to influence and change the lives of our youth. For many, that is all that’s necessary, but it is a critical reason why many will never even entertain the profession in the first place. Why put your talents into a field that is not commensurate with your ability? If we want the very best teachers, I happen to agree with Senator Booker here when he expressed that we need to pay them more, and ironically New Jersey is one of the highest paid states. His solution is a workaround to a broken system. I want to see education revolutionized.
So imagine a world in which children of all types can go to any type of school based on their own passions, parental input, and ability. Imagine a world where students in failing school districts can choose those schools as well as parents in wealthy school districts. Imagine if those schools took an entirely different approach to education and set children up for the Information Age. Imagine if teachers received merit pay, bonuses, 401(k)’s, and benefits that were equal to their ability to perform as amazing teachers. Why can’t teachers be paid over $100k and the school helps them pay for their supplies instead of giving them a tax deduction to pay for their own? Imagine a system in which science and mathematics make a comeback in the United States as a result. So now we have those high-demand subjects filled by teachers who willingly want to work in it.
This system is not only possible, but probable if we do the right thing. We need to allow students and parents the choice to go to private schools and empower low-income families to do so through a school voucher system. Don’t take my word for it. John Stossel along with many in the education field have covered the success of charter schools ad nauseam. This is a battle that Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians can and should win easily, especially in inner cities.
I do get the criticism from the libertarian faction that a true free market school system should be free of government intervention. I agree with this idea long term. Charter schools are showing this is possible in any living condition as benefactors help pay for the school in addition to tuition requirements. But in the short-term, let innovation in the private sector move the educational field forward by way of a school voucher system.
Our children and teachers, no matter the ethnicity, race, religion, or socioeconomic condition deserve better than the archaic system we currently have. Legislation that throws money at the problem, like the STRIVE Act, doesn’t improve the grade of education. Only a true educational revolution will make it better than it is.
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