The current US school system is, as far as I'm concerned, broken at all levels. The funding structure is too disconnected from the local population to encourage thrift and innovation, the curriculum has been taken over by distant elites that school communities have no interest in or influence over, and performance mandates are increasingly focusing school attention on meeting metrics that are supposed to be approximations of their primary purpose, which of course distracts the schools from their true primary purpose. As schools increasingly fail to do their job well, the entire paradigm around which schools are designed is starting to be called into question.
As an example of how things get broken in our school system, krnel mentioned that schools are not paid for days that students don't attend. Now, theoretically this is supposed to put pressure on the school to reduce truancy, and apparently the idea is that schools have some control over whether students attend class or not, but at the root of this solution lies a societal error that has doomed the whole idea of public education right from the start. This fundamental error is the idea that schools are responsible for educating students.
This is backwards.
Parents are responsible for educating their children. Schools are simply the tool that they use to accomplish this goal. Believers in centralization chose to value the goal of every child receiving an education as a higher priority than maintaining the primacy of parental responsibility, and thus chose to make education the responsibility of the collective society rather than the responsibility of the parent.
But consider how much dysfunction emerges from this one single faulty intellectual foundation. Because educating children is no longer the responsibility of the parents, governments must fund schools through taxes rather than having schools charge tuition, because as a "public" solution the one thing they cannot ever be accused of doing is tying education to parental wallets. Tuition vouchers still retain the scent of parental responsibility, so taxes and redistribution win. Thus parents relinquish a portion of their direct control over funding, and the result is increasingly large and bureaucratically bloated school structures, bloated because the primary and immediate feedback loop between funding and efficiency has been severed.
As the school system gets larger, which of course is encouraged in the name of "economy of size", teachers and officials become increasingly disconnected from the parents, and they start to see the school system as "theirs" rather than belonging to the parents. Parents find it increasingly difficult to have any control over the course their child ends up taking through the system. Less and less control over choice of teacher, almost no control over curriculum, and absolutely no control over which school they attend. Decisions increasingly get made with the safety and reputation and "blamelessness" of school officials in mind, regardless of how this affects parents or students.
Case in point. Our family recently moved to a very small public school system, and it was heartwarming to me to see that they still posted class lists in the library window and online (you can still decline to have your information posted publicly if you want.) We have an active community, and how on earth are parents whose children are in the same class going to get in contact with each other to supply and organize class functions or invite all of the kids in the class to birthday parties without this information?
The school system we left was a much larger one -- quadruple the size. In the name of "student privacy", this system didn't release any information about other parents or students to anyone -- no options, they just refused to release the information because they didn't want to be blamed for anything that might possibly happen. So the poor parents who wanted to try and have the class be a community had to hustle around with note pads at the first class function, exchanging names and e-mail addresses and still missing parents who didn't attend, basically trying to go around the limitations the school set in their way. As all bureaucracies do, the school chose its own self interest over being what it is supposed to be, which is an outgrowth of the community. They expected parents to drop the kids off at the education factory and wait patiently until their children emerged with stars on their tummies (h/t Dr. Seuss and his Sneetches) from the other end. But make no mistake --this factory is not controlled by the parents. It is controlled by the factory workers, who allow the parents access and input as long as it is deemed non-threatening by the factory workers.
Because the system is now responsible for student quality rather than parents, parents grow to see visible achievements -- going on to the next grade, graduating from high school -- as a proxy for actual education, and this misconception presents a constant temptation to the system to water down achievement requirements. Most of the time the system chooses to value homogeneity over achievement, to keep students moving together in chronological lock step regardless of achievement, because if students don't get passed on, it is perceived as a failure on the part of the school system.
Unfortunately, this whole paradigm represents the school system attempting to take on a burden and responsibility that they cannot and should not bear. Cannot because they are unable to bring the same concern and are forbidden to apply the same punishments and rewards that a parent would, and should not because the attempt introduces distortions into society that are destructive.
Which takes us back to the whole idea that schools are not given funding for days that students do not attend. This is idiotic. I understand that this represents the only lever that a centralized system can pull to try to make sure that schools are not happily collecting money for students that are out roaming the countryside, but in the end schools have absolutely no control over whether students choose to show up or not. It's not like the school gets to decrease staffing for one day if a student doesn't show up. The building costs don't decrease and the staffing costs don't decrease. All it does is remove money that the rest of the students need. And it impacts parental choices.
For example. Our school has occasional half days for teacher training, etc. Most of the time, they used to have these on fridays. These end up being a perfect day for the kids to skip school as it allows a long weekend. And honestly -- whether kids skip school or not is up to parents. If children are not falling behind and can make up their schoolwork, why should that not be up to the parents?
However, the school doesn't get any money for that day if students don't attend. Last year, enough parents took their kids out of school on a certain half day that the district lost enough funding to pay for a spanish teacher for the entire year. That money belongs to the school. Not the state. And yet the state keeps it and the school and parents have no recourse. So now, the school schedules its half days midweek to try and reduce absences, which of course reduces the chances that families have to get away and spend some time together.
Two years ago my daughter had mono and was out of school for two weeks. The school was freaking out because that is a lot of money. So they had us bring our daughter in the morning until official attendance was taken at 10 am, and then we would take her home. Needless hoops to satisfy distant bureaucrats over a problem that our school doesn't have. And our local community gets jacked up as collateral damage.
But to get back to the problem with the system on a societal level, as school becomes mandatory society begins to depend on the ubiquitous child care that school represents. No parents in the home most of the time because both parents are working. Which society portrays as freedom, as a victory, but this situation depends on school acting as the parents much of the time, and bureaucracy is a terrible parent. Society and family connections start to deteriorate.
But society continues to plow ahead with its goal of society pulling itself up by its bootstraps, of making everyone above average by giving everyone a high school education at which point we can all be middle class -- but of course, this is impossible. Society can only use a certain number of high school educated people. And as everyone gets a high school degree and the degrees get watered down, they cease to indicate anything. No way to tell who can handle more rigorous intellectual duties from those who can't. So the system adds college. College degrees now become the ticket to a better life, so everyone dutifully lines up to get their college degree tummy star on thars. But society can only use a certain number of college educated citizens. And as everyone soon has a degree and the degrees get watered down, they cease to indicate anything.
So the system adds post-graduate degrees. And everyone dutifully lines up....
It's an arms race, people. And it's nonsense.
So. How would it work if we started over?
Three principles:
Parents are the only ones that can or should be responsible for educating their children.
This means that funding follows students and parents can send them anywhere they want. The system needs to stay small enough that parents still have control over it. Redistribution can happen through charity or whatever system the local community decides to implement.
Learning does not correlate with chronology.
This means that students learn different things at different rates. Forcing everyone to march in lock step is a remnant of the industrial age, the mind set that standardization and commoditization are the keys to improvements in efficiency and quality. This does not work for biologic systems. Computer based learning is now available to everyone, and because of the magic of electronics can be scaled up from one student to the whole nation for essentially the same price. This means that students of the same age could sit side by side in the same room so that they are able to benefit socially, but with computer based learning could progress independently of each other. This would maximize everyone rather than only maximizing those at the bottom.
Certification does not equal knowledge and knowledge definitely does not equal wisdom
I think we have proven that an educated society is not a better society. Most jobs do not require much formal knowledge. Basic reading and math are enough. School should focus much more on practical knowledge, and should start this in grade school. There is no reason for many students to attend school much past 8th grade. Every ounce of education past what a person uses regularly is wasted as far as society is concerned. Many students would benefit from a break from school during the teen years, as they would be a lot more efficient and dedicated to learning if they went back in their 20s after getting some practical experience about how life works.
Thanks for reading the wall of text and look forward to your thoughts!