Making the most of partners

To face the myriad of conflicts facing schools, public or privatized, an emphasis on integrating the funds and services of relevant partners will be essential in maximizing services.

These partners deserve significant flexibility consistent with their own goals; the government should be reduced to providing national frameworks and standardized systems for the allocation of resources. Comprehensive measuring will be necessary to meet the demands of many organizations who seek to measure the direct impact of their contributions.

Dynamic labor force

6.1 One potential partner will be utilizing networks of teachers, similar to the services provided by Teach for America. Scaled nationally, the organization can serve as a dynamic agency for directing resources to regions most in need, serve as valuable base for long term recruitment and training.
6.2 Similarly, schools would be encouraged to implement volunteers—paid, unpaid, or as part of a broadened Teach for America system—in their classroom. Functioning as readers, assistants, or a portion of management, such partners would significantly reduce costs and expand opportunities for teachers. Assistants with basic training could significantly impact the student to teacher ratio. A specific opportunity is in allowing schools to hire qualified retirees to teach courses relevant to their experience - an effort to engage schools in the transfer of the retiree knowledge base.

Scholarships

6.3 The most common form of partner integration will be in the establishment of scholarships for university education. The system can take a variety of forms—a likely course will be the establishment of a national database of student performance and activities, available in a manner that does not compromise privacy, allowing potential donors to filter potential prospects and contribute in a streamlined process to a student’s education account. This is more an opportunity for existing services to partner further with schools and students than it is an adovcacy of a new framework.

Schools

6.4 Some persons and institutions will prefer to establish their own private schools, fully or significantly without government contribution. Other institutions will prefer implementing programs within established schools for niche interests. They must continue to adhere to basic federal curriculum standards.

Colleges

6.5 Where available, schools will integrate with community colleges to allow students to complete a portion of their workload prior to graduation; additionally, some large colleges may initiate distance-learning programs in high schools—available on a free or highly reduced basis.
6.6 Preparatory schools may utilize discretionary funds for extensive college application assistance including subsidizing application fees.

Foreign language

6.7 Schools should also seek to partner with foreign nations in supplementing America’s foreign education teacher base with native speakers—especially in areas with little exposure in the country, like Mandarin or Arabic.

Advanced placement programs

6.8 Schools will be encouraged to offer courses aligned with the College Board’s Advanced Placement standards.
6.9 Schools may subsidize or completely pay for the costs of taking the tests as a perquisite designed to attract students.
6.10 Preparatory focus schools may also pay for and require that their students take additional examinations such as the ACT and SAT to enhance competiveness.

Such subsidization can ameliorate cost concerns for students that can often limit students’ ability to engage fully in the college application process due to fees or costs of visiting campuses.[1]

An all together different marketplace of ideas
In the meantime, schools have dithered on in countless endeavors in the pursuit of a harmonious society. Moral education brings with it a myriad of controversies – be it sexual and drugs education, community service, and, rather amusingly, marriage courses.[2] Driver’s education has never been duller.

Such additions to the classroom are – while admirable in aim – distracting in effect. Less clutter and more focus couldn’t be more welcome to classrooms, yet the barrage of special interests is firmly rooted. An autonomous schools system as proposed by this paper would be less entangled. Alongside the more rigorous voluntary national, state, and local curriculums, Kansas proposes that all but critical health programs are limited to a voluntary status. Governments would be free to incentivize such teaching to fund textbooks and resources as they will. Such a system inverts the relationship between school and government, offering schools the flexibility to offer distinctive programs and courses – organic gardening, perhaps – that appeal to their students.

This framework would also add much needed transparency to the murky world of what to teach. Organizations and companies alike can construct a curriculum that, if vetted by local school districts, could be added to the list of voluntary curriculums – contributing resources as they choose. It, while undesirable, is already being done: look closely at your child’s worksheets bordered with candies.[3] As long as the involvement is disclosed, schools walk this avenue at their own peril. Even then, such debates pails in comparison to the far more important ones competing to demonstrate how effectively they can spur intellectual development. Schools deciding on KIPP or International Baccalaureate structures – or charting their own course – with passion and adequate resource are the essential feature. Everything else promises to be, at best, good fun for the cynical observer. How long until Acme’s Comprehensive Scrapbooking Course remains to be seen. Scrapbooking, is an art – isn’t it?

[1] Costs begin before college. Alvin P. Sanoff. USA Today. 7 February 2005. http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2005-02-06-college-costs_x.htm
[2] Ibid. Page 4.
[3] Don’t Eat This Book. Fast Food and The Supersizing of America. Morgan Spurlock. Putnam Adult. 2005.