X-Prize Founder Wants Ideas For Fixing Education

An anonymous reader writes "X-Prize Founder Peter Diamandis, speaking at SXSW, says he wants to set up a $10 million prize for fixing education — but he needs help figuring out how to target the problem. From the article: 'He said he has considered multiple directions that an Education X Prize could take, such as coming up with better ways to crowd-source education, or rewarding the creation of "powerful, addictive game" that promotes education. But he isn’t sure which way to go. There’s no shortage of high-tech visionaries and tycoons these days, running around with ideas about how to fix education. Many of them are finding, though, that technology alone isn’t enough. Exciting ideas founder quickly if they don’t sustain motivation in students who perform at widely different levels. Other challenges include the need to engage effectively with school districts, teachers and parents.'"

Comments

Unions

[Nerdfest]

Personally, I think parents and teachers unions are the biggest parts of the problems, or are certainly high on the list.

Re:Unions

[Nerdfest]

I think a voucher system would go a long way. Teachers unions hate it though.

Re:Unions

[Totenglocke]

Teachers unions hate vouchers because vouchers will harm most children.

Bull. Vouchers would allow kids who want to learn but are stuck in a shitty school to move to another school without having to pay all of the extra money for a private school. The teachers unions hate vouchers because it would shift most students into private schools which are non-union and would destroy the union's power.

Re:Unions

[AK Marc]

Bull. Vouchers would allow kids who want to learn but are stuck in a shitty school to move to another school without having to pay all of the extra money for a private school.

Bull. Private schools are very selective. They'll reject anyone who wouldn't otherwise have gone there. It's welfare for the rich, nothing else.

I disagree.

[khasim]

You're going to have to specify what you mean by "unions" being the problem.

Parents can cause problems by not providing a stable home environment and emphasis on learning. Or parents can help by providing those. So "parents" being a "problem" ... again, you have to specify what you mean.

But first off, someone needs to define the "problem".
What, exactly, needs to be improved?
Are there other countries that are doing better?
If so, what are their approaches?

Re:I disagree.

[nbauman]

Since the teachers in most of the countries whose students are doing better than the U.S. are heavily unionized, such as Finland, Germany and Canada, the problem must be something other than unions.

In fact, within the U.S., students in union states are doing better than students in non-union states.

Re:I disagree.

[phantomfive]

Since the teachers in most of the countries whose students are doing better than the U.S. are heavily unionized, such as Finland, Germany and Canada, the problem must be something other than unions.

I've never been to Finland, but unions in other countries are not the same as unions in the US. For example, in California, a teacher gets tenure after two years. How do you fire a bad teacher after that?

The problem is not having unions, it's the type of unions we have in the US.

Re:I disagree.

[phantomfive]

After a teacher has tenure, the termination process is fairly simple, as with almost any employee working under a contract.

No, it is not fairly simple. It is a long process, and carries with it the high probability of a lawsuit.

Re:I disagree.

[phantomfive]

The same way you fire anyone else: By firing them. The "tenure" everyone talks about isn't "tenure". The only difference is that after two years, the school has to document a reason for the firing. Before that, they can fire the teacher at any time, for no reason at all.

No, it's not the same way as anyone else. It is really hard to fire a teacher in California. Either you're oblivious to that fact, or you are willfully deceptive. In the first case, it's very hard to get rid of a teacher who can't teach. As long as they don't mess up, they will stay in their position.

Even if they do mess up, say, have a principle has an affair with a teacher and is also found mismanaging the accounting and lying to the schoolboard and teachers, you STILL can't fire him easily. It will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and can take a year or more. I know this because it happened near where I live.

Here's another good explanation. A good quote from the article, "You're in the position of having to look at 125 kids and just say, 'I'm sorry,' because the process of removal is really difficult. . . . You're looking at these kids and knowing they are going to high school and they're not ready. It is absolutely devastating."

How is that helping kids? It's not. School needs to be about helping kids, even if some teachers get fired without deserving it. That's not the end of the world.

Re:I disagree.

[diaz]

Part of the problem is the administrators. Teachers don't simply get tenure handed to them after a couple of years. The have to be reviewed by administrators. Typically, administrators have a bare minimum of classroom experience and can't tell the difference between a good teacher and a bad one. Yet they are the ones handing out the tenure. Only years later after many parent complaints do they discover that they have a bad teacher. Get better administrators and you'll have fewer bad teachers with tenure. Parents are a part of the problem. You have parents that don't place an emphasis on education. Parents that place an emphasis on education, but do not have the time, education or language to help their kids with their homework. Parents that think little Susie is getting bad grades because the teachers are out to get her because of her dress/race/etc. Parents that think that THEIR child would NEVER misbehave, so the teacher is at fault. Parent's that don't know how to get their kids to study more, but excuse their 16 year old from school to get their driver's license.

Make Academics a Spectator Sport

[Roger W Moore]

The biggest problem I see is the lack of streaming in education. Trying to give everyone the same education is simply stupid. There is no way that you can teach at a level such that the slowest students are keeping up while the top students are stretched - someone, somewhere has to suffer. However the moment you try to stream students there are cries of discrimination and unfairness. Frankly I do not think that education will be fixed until there are governments willing to tackle this politically sensitive issue.

The curious thing is that, somehow, this does not apply to sports. Nobody would think it sensible that footballers, athletes etc. are held back and denied more advanced training because it is discriminatory against those who have less physical ability...but the moment it comes to academics it is a completely different story. I think the key difference is that society can easily see the benefit of a good sports person - they entertain. However the benefit of a good academic - jobs created, industries founded, science discovered etc. - is less clear and being smart is perceived as benefiting the individual only.

So perhaps that X prize should go to the best idea for turning academic subjects into a spectator sport. The moment we have people interested in watching teams of physicists competing there will be no problem in getting a more rigorous education for those who need it.

Re:Easy to say. Hard to do.

[Toam]

So if you're in an area where children aren't "performing" due largely to the attitude of their parents, and your performance evaluation is bad, all the teachers should leave and go somewhere else?

What you're saying is that people who live in an area where most parents don't care about their childrens education (even if they themselves DO care about their childrens education) don't deserve to have a school.

Also, it means that a teacher who lives (works) in an area where parents are move involved in their childrens education will have to work "less hard" for a greater pay cheque than a teacher in a "worse" area would.

Not everything should be run like a business.

I think you have that backwards.

[khasim]

So X (what is wrong with education here) has not been defined ...
Which means that a plan to fix X is sort of impossible at this point ...

But you've already determined that there needs to be a way of "weeding out the bad teachers" in the plan.

Sounds to me that your REAL goal is "weeding out" some teachers. And then basing a "plan" around that.

How about we stick to finding X first?
What, specifically, is WRONG with education today?
Is any other country doing it better? How?

Re:Now you've switched again.

[adamchou]

i'm not sure if you're just being a troll or just really stubborn... but isn't it obvious what the problem is? the education our children are getting is substandard, especially when compared to numerous other countries. i don't think anyone bothered "identifying" it to you because it was so obvious, we just assumed you'd know what we're talking about here.

as for the business analogy, you totally missed the point. yes, bankruptcy and not being profitable might be the problem, but firing someone won't solve it. there are so many possibilities and likely many reasons why the business is failing. firing the bad apples is just one part of the solution. just like firing the bad teachers is also just one part of the solution to our problem. there are numerous other problems, however. for instance...

• we have a system where kids only go to school 6 hours a day, 1 of which is physical education and one of which is recess/lunch time. that leaves only 4 hours of actual class time instruction. to top that off, they don't go to school for 2 or 3 weeks during the winter and 3 months during the summer because they need some sort of break. for what?
• the good teachers are not getting compensated enough. the only ones doing a good job are the ones that actually have a passion for just teaching; and there aren't enough of those types of people in the US to educate all our children. all the other smart people are going into the private sector where they're getting paid double or triple what teachers are getting paid.
• although its not really a school system problem, the american culture likes to tag smart people with derogatory terms like geek and nerd and they actually get teased in school.

and i didn't even get into the politics of the education system. i'm not well enough informed about that to speak authoritatively but my friends that are teachers tell me how screwed up it is all the time.

Simple Solutions

[catchblue22]

The first step in solving the "education problem" is to realize that there are no simple answers to solving the "education problem". If anybody claims they have a simple solution, they are probably trying to sell something. The problems of education go back many centuries. Plutarch, 2000 years ago said that "a mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled". Aristotle said that "the purpose of education is to teach us to love beauty". Our addiction to simple ideological solutions to our problems is I believe at the heart of much of our modern malaise.