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

[Anonymous Coward]

That's definitely a large part of the problem. I work in public education and on a daily basis see parents who have no interest in their children's education.
Problem is, these parents generally didn't care while they were in school so the "school is boring, there's no need to learn" nonsense is generational, largely caused by the teacher problem.

You have teachers who get tenure, have a job protected by the union and no longer care to even try to do it well.
Ditch the teacher unions and more proactively evaluate teachers based on technology skills, classroom leadership and student involvement in the learning process.
The good teachers aren't always the ones whose students have the best grades( standardized testing I'm pointing at you), they're the ones where the students WANT to be involved in the class process. You teach someone to have a thirst for knowledge you have a productive member of society, you teach them to regurgitate textbooks and they can't think on their own without direct instruction.

Re:Unions

[Nerdfest]

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

Re:Unions

[rwa2]

Meh, can't really see much that AI-teacherbots could do that TV-instruction already failed to do in the 70s. Other than just divert resources away from more traditional teaching resources.

Teaching isn't a respected profession in the US (read about how they're treated in Finland). The few teachers that do stick it out pretty much do so on principle until their morale is beat down by administration and lack of resources. They face strict quotas on pencils and copier paper, and annual fads where everyone and their monkeys drop by to tell them exactly how to do their jobs down to where they write the objective on the board and the minimum number of flyers to have on their bulletin boards. The good teachers I've met are very internally motivated, and usually have very supportive spouses with "real" jobs (incidentally, they also tend to be smokin' hot). The rest eventually burn out and sit back and decide to just give as good as they get, which isn't terribly much. Trying something different is typically punished or at the very least not rewarded.

Every once in a while (actually, all the time, it seems) someone comes around and wants to throw a magic bullet at the problem... "oh, if only every child had textbooks, let's throw all this money at textbook publishers!", "oh, if only every child had TV instruction, let's put VCRs in every classroom!", "oh, let's put computers in every classroom, but not really provide a way to use them productively", "oh, if only no child was left behind, let's make them take a month's worth of standardized testing and threaten to fire everyone if their scores don't show Acceptable Yearly Progress!", "oh, let's buy everyone iPads!" (OK, my teacher wife actually sort of liked the last one, because they actually provided decent training and she can use it as a ridiculously expensive workaround for not having a decent pen & paper quota)

But really, the things that have the greatest impact on the students are the things that are closest to the students: their parents, their teachers, their classmates. Invest in improving those first.

Sure technology could help improve productivity, if they have a decent IT department -- just like any other profession. Technology might enhance, but is not going to effectively replace teaching... it happens to be a very human, social interaction. Sheesh, even the Diamond Age featured a human prostitute/teacher ractive for interaction.

Disclaimer: I support public education; I married a teacher

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.

Why innovate

[obi1one]

Why are we trying to innovate to fix education? A quick search indicates we are around 15th in reading and science, worse in math. Doesn't that mean there are 15 countries doing it better which we could try to emulate them rather than spending money trying to create something cool and new?

Looking in the wrong places

[luis_a_espinal]

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.

This isn't a game or something that is fixed by simply throwing money at. It is a social problem first and foremost. The culture of this country does not appreciate education, and the idea of studying as hard as South Koreans or Japanese is seen as if it were child abuse or something like that.

But he isn’t sure which way to go.

Look at Japan, South Korean, Germany, Finland. Copy, adapt, rinse and repeat. Moreover, for changes specific to our country, I would suggest the following:

1. Get rid of summer school (or provide vouchers for low-income people to put their kids in summer camps.)

2. From that above, increase the number of school hours during the year, like in Japan or Germany, or like in almost any other country, developed and otherwise.

3. Teach kids to stand up when a teacher enters and leaves a room, and teach them, no, put them to clean their own class rooms as part of their daily school day.

4. Give teachers better pay and better training.

5. Don't pass kids to the next grade unless they have actually demonstrated they are capable off. Enough of giving HS degrees to kids who LITERALLY cannot read or add fractions.

6. De-emphasize 4-year college degrees. Instead, emphasize vocational training at the HS and community college level. That is, implement something akin to that the Germans and Japanese have.

7. Increase the number of commercials that laud education. Increase the number of educational programs (.ie. musicals and documentaries) in TV. Compare the number of educational programs and commercials in Japanese TV to ours, and you'll see the difference.

Do that and in a generation you'll see a change, all without throwing the coffers out of the window and without looking for the next e-silver bullet.

You can throw billions at the problem, but if we don't change our culture and the basic nature of our curricula, it ain't gonna count for shit.

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.

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest difference is the process by which you become a teacher in these countries. Entry into teacher preparation is very competitive, e.g. in Korea you must be in the top 10% of your graduating class. And a fair number of those admitted don't make it to graduation.. So the situation is much more like med school. And how do you get the top 10% to become teachers? You keep the tuition cost minimal. You pay them commensurate to this level of skill. Compared to the US where most Ed programs are self selecting and the gateway is paying your tuition and perhaps passing some form of standardized test.

Yes there are bad teachers, just as there are bad police, fireman, secretaries, (your job here), etc. It very popular today to attack teachers and characterized them as lazy leaches on the public teat. For the vast majority of teacher this is a very unfair characterization. They put in long hours, far beyond the typical 7.5 hours or so of the school day. The majority of them take money out their own pockets to have class supplies. And maintaining the license requires continuing education, almost always at their own cost. And the pay is not really that great, the promised retirement benefits help to offset the low pay. Personally I find that money spend on teachers is far less abhorrent than the rather generous salaries paid to various politicians.

  And there has only been one research project that looked at student performance and the strength of teacher unions. And in that research there was a positive between strong unions and higher SAT scores. Of the 5 states that don't have any teacher unions, only Virginia score in the middle in terms of SAT, graduation rates and NEAP score. The other 4 non-union states are clustered at the bottom.

Re:I disagree.

[RogueWarrior65]

Okay, here's a real world example. The New York City public school system has roughly 2000 teachers in what's known as "the rubber room." They have been removed from the classroom for a variety of reasons from poor performance to criminal activity. The union contract requires that they A) keep their job, B) get their full salary and benefits. Mayor Bloomberg wants to fire them but legally can't. Many types of unions have rubber rooms particularly the UAW. And people wonder why GM crashed and burned, was propped up by the taxpayers without them getting a say in the matter, turned over to the union who gets a tax credit for the losses before the bailout and they still can't get profitable.

In New Jersey, the following procedure must be followed in order to fire a teacher. Time involved: 2 to 5 years.
http://www.publicschoolspending.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/New-Jersey-Tenure-chart.pdf

But to be more specific, the union isn't the only problem. Collective bargaining is a bigger problem. Imagine if you wanted to buy eggs but by law you weren't allowed open the carton to make sure none of them were cracked or spoiled. Not only that but you were required to buy a gross of eggs every week but you're a single person. And then to add insult to injury, you were required to save the shells and dispose of them in a government approved landfill for which you had to pay a maintenance fee until the shells completely decompose.

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?

A computer game idea

[Michael Woodhams]

Quantum mechanics, special relativity and general relativity are all very hard to learn, in part because they are so counterintuitive. Imagine a computer game which throws you into a universe where SR (or quantum mechanics or GR) have large, easily measurable effects - e.g. the speed of light is about 50m/s. After you've spent enough time zipping around on your relativistic motorcycle shooting zombies (or whatever), you should be able to intuitively understand SR, and the mathematics will become easy. (Well, as easy as Newtonian physics, anyhow.)

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.