If I had only one educational reform, it would be to remove the expectation that a child should be graduated from high school by age 18 or even 19. Let's go ahead and provide twelve years of education, but let's folks take it when they're ready. Mostly this would mean letting a child start school at age 8 or 9, but this could also mean that we give them some time off when their cognitive development doesn't seem to be matching pace with their classmates, or when disruptions that life brings, like illness or a death in the family, can stall their studies for a year.
Notice I'm not saying we change one other thing about the way we do school.
This means we could say to the middle schooler who's just too cool for school to come back some year when s/he's ready to do the work. I proposed this to a middle school administrator once, who asked me what would happen to all the kids on the street. I told him that his job was to run his school, and that the parents should be looking after their kids. I think this shows how far the state has become the parent, and how well we've prepared teachers to think they must be the ones to raise the child.
I see huge variation in the abilities of high schoolers. We could slow down the pace of school for some high schoolers to half the course load for a year or two. They would finish in 5 to 8 years, but we wouldn't have to dumb down the curriculum for them.
It might mean that a well-prepared child educated completely at home, or perhaps at the parents' expense at a private school, who shows up for college, passing entrance exams and placement tests, gets his or her college paid for all the way through their doctoral degree.
Here's what this might affect:
1. Many kids fail in school not because their teachers or the schools aren't doing their jobs, but because their families are so disrupted that they can't do any homework at home. When these kids come home they might have to take care of younger siblings while mom works, dad is absent, or perhaps one or both parents are involved in substance abuse. If there's yelling and screaming going on at home, you really can't expect kids to get much homework done. These kids need some educational space, perhaps the opportunity to get a job which would give them a little power over their lives and some other adults who would be happy to advocate for them. Let them take half the course load as well, and you give them a chance to succeed.
2. It could mean that schools could set entrance requirements, something that makes a whole lot more sense to me than exit requirements, like the state 'standardized' tests that were the result of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act. Parents might actually have to help get their child ready to learn and participate in the child's education, rather than handing them off to the state to babysit while they go earn an income. It would mean that we wouldn't be doing potty training in kindergarten.
3. If we start education later, it can also mean that we can get the job done in less time, as well as less expense for the state. The child who is cognitively ready for school can do it quickly. As proof, I offer the fact that we offer the most very basic remedial classes at our local community college, including levels of math that begin with adding and subtracting with whole numbers. Two quarters later, the student is ready for high school algebra. Hmm. K-8 education finished in less than one year. Why DO we want kids in school at age 5?
This reform wouldn't cost a single penny, but it would allow many more students to get a quality high school education, and would allow the best to achieve the highest levels.
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