Slow Down High School

We seem to think that humans are on an upward evolutionary path.  We keep raising high school graduation requirements, thinking we are raising the bar for basic achievement (after all, everyone needs a high school diploma, right?), when all that accomplishes is more students dropped out of high school.

I don't have a problem with offering more education to high schoolers.  I have a problem with requiring them all to achieve at the same level at the same time.

There are lots of high schoolers out there who need more time to do well in high school.  In my work at the local community college I hear from them every term.  These are kids who were perhaps not quite ready, cognitively, or they may be kids who just never had a chance to do very well.  By that, I mean that their home lives were so disrupted that they didn't get a chance to do their homework.  Parents may have been divorced or their families disrupted in other ways, and it may just have not been possible for these kids to get homework done.  

Some kids just need more time to absorb their learning and do homework, and six classes (or eight in some of the block scheduling patterns) may just be too many for these kids.  Our industrial manufacturing, conveyor belt model of doing education emphasizes getting to the end of the conveyor belt over developing a quality product along the way.

For lots of high school kids, we should just slow down their education.  This is true even for homeschooled kids who have the best families in the world. 

Doing well is more important than getting high school done on time.

The benefits of slowing down high school for some kids is tremendous.  Their grade point average increases.  Their ability to take tougher classes increases.  These two items are the most important part of college entrance decisions.  A good score on the SAT or the ACT tests only confirms what the track record shows.  Scores don't have to be superlative, just good.

A student who has a good track record and has demonstrated ability to do well in tough classes has more doors open, both in colleges that student might attend and in scholarship possibilities.

It's a paradigm shift for high school guidance counselors, but if you have a child who would benefit from taking 3 to 5 classes instead of the usual 6, then ask the counselor if s/he would be willing to allow your child to do this.  You'll have to acknowledge that graduation won't happen 'on time', but again, the track record is more important than the finish date.

You may well find that a year or two of cognitive maturing can make a huge difference later on.  That student who was behind in their second year of high school, because s/he only took four classes, may well be able to pour on the heat and make up the difference as a senior with a supplemental class from a local community college evenings or summers.  The brain matures, and magic happens.   It's not necessary to finish on time in this way, but it can happen.  (I would rather just allow the student to finish in his/her merry time rather than push for the finish line to graduate with age peers.)

Kids who slowed down and stayed at that slower level may be finishing high school outside of the K-12 public school system, but there isn't anything wrong with that.  It may cost money, but this is why we should implement my "Twelve years, take it when you're ready" reform.  These students could get partial credit for one year and be able to have the state pay for it elsewhere during another year.

For the student who may well be cognitively ready but lives with a disrupted home life, slowing school down to two-thirds pace or half pace allows that kid to get a job outside of high school.  This isn't a bad idea for any kid.  But for that kid struggling with drama at home, a job can give that kid a little more power with his or her own money to spend.  The need to be at work on Saturday can have a huge influence on choices for Friday night activities.  There may be a boss or another adult coworker who becomes an advocate for the child both at home and in school.

I would not worry about the child who becomes deeply involved in work to the point where it postpones school.  We have many mechanisms in this country for making up lost school time.  There is NOTHING wrong becoming so good at something that people pay you for it, even at age 16 or 17.  Personal achievement comes in lots of ways.  The level of education is only one of them.

I see these postponed students at the local community college, which is usually a great place to remedy a track record or build a new one.  I love our community college system for this.  These folks show up in my 'remedial' (high school level) math classes, sometimes frightened to death.  They did poorly in the subject the first time, or couldn't do the homework, or perhaps blew off school in high school.  They could have had poor instruction the first time around.  But they begin to soar, and they're amazed at their ability.  It's not that I'm magical, although sometimes they tell me that, but now their brains are better.  They conquer high school algebra, which usually takes a full year in the ninth grade, in two quarters (six months).

It's really fun when these folks tag me a couple of years later, and tell me that they've just finished the calculus sequence.  They are adults of all ages, and now doors everywhere are open to them.

If your child is struggling in high school, consider slowing down high school for your child.  Doors will open later on.  You're the parent.  Come on, you can take control.

No! Not a Master's in Education!

If you're thinking about acquiring a Master's degree in education, please allow me to discourage that thought.  Outside of K-12 public education, it will be completely worthless.  Inside K-12 public education, it will only get you a modest pay raise, and it will be unlikely to make you a better teacher.

I acquired mine back in 1992.  The focus for my degree was on how technology could assist in education.  Back then, I owned a Macintosh LC.  It had a 15 MHz CPU, 2 whole MB (that's MB, not GB) RAM, and a 40 MB (not GB) hard drive.

How relevant do you think that degree would be for today's educational needs?  Yeah.  The only thing that piece of paper shows is that I was able to read a lot of papers about other people's thinking on education, and generate my own thinking in another paper.  I don't know how many people ever read my field project write up, outside my advisor and perhaps the other two educators who were on my field project committee.  I don't think any of them would remember it.

It did have the effect of turning my head around 180 degrees about the uses of technology in education.  I went in thinking I would be studying how to write some outstanding software in education, and I wanted to do that.  I came out the other end certain that couldn't be done, no matter how wonderful the technology.  I have yet to be proven wrong.  Computers and software do not teach.  Distance learning is for a very few people.  Computers and technology are tools in the hands of good educators, they are no substitute for a good educator.

That was a fair bit of funds down the tube to show it couldn't be done.  I don't mind spending money to eliminate possibilities, but this degree did not give me a marketable skill.

Education is like that.  From the undergraduate to the doctorate level, we study the latest fads in education, educational theory, current problems in education, current trends in education.  We can tell you about Bloom's Taxonomy, multiple intelligences, group learning and grading, cycles of learning, direct instruction, the Platonic model, internalizing education, authentic assessment, standardized assessment, diversity, minority education, ESL, theory about teaching reading via phonics, whole word, and whole language, John Dewey,  Montessori, Piaget, Vigotsky, etc. etc.  

My degree was in 1992.  If you've worked on one since then, and recognize almost none of these topics, then I have made my case.  Education as a field of study has no body of knowledge that is its foundation.

You won't have a marketable skill in any field outside of education.  Your Master's degree in education may not even be any good at the local community college, because they are more and more requiring that degree to be in the field that you are teaching.  I'm grandfathered in.  For now.  That may change.

So if you need a Master's degree, get something in a real field, like a foreign language, or literature, or engineering or biology or math.  You'll have more to teach when you return to the classroom, rather than some squishy theories about how we learn and some techniques to control crowds of students.  

Teaching in a moral vacuum

Whoever thought that the education that our kids need can be given in a moral vacuum?  Is it possible to actually teach any subject matter at all without bumping up against a moral issue?

I teach math at the local community college, and perhaps this field comes the closest to being value-neutral.  That still doesn't eliminate the instructors who have a pretty big ax to grind with their students.  I work with bleeding heart liberals who use their time in front of a class to pontificate.  It could also happen with us conservatives.  

But look at the book!  We see endless word problems in math texts in which the females are faster, richer, smarter than the males.  Pick up a used college text at any local used book store and you'll see what I mean.

So even in math, women are better than men.  All racial groups must be present in the book, or some student will feel left out, and that will be bad.

I rest my case.  Education cannot take place in a moral vacuum, because there is no vacuum.  Something has seeped inside that sterile seal, or else there never was one.

So whose moral outlook do YOU want represented to YOUR children?  If you send them to public schools, then you will see that in the textbooks, all women are smarter than men, and that all racial, ethnic, and now also any group of any sexual orientation must now also be properly represented to your children, just in case that any of THEM fall into those categories, and we don't want anyone to feel left out.

Frankly, I do NOT want my tax dollars telling my kids what to believe.  

And if you don't, either, then let's follow this out to the logical conclusion:  We need to end public education, because morality is always in education, and we don't want the government picking what you should believe.

Some other time, I'll offer suggestions on what we ought to do instead.

You don't need a diploma to go to college

Say, what?  Come again?

A few years ago I got a call from our local high school in September.  It was the attendance office.  "Where's your daughter?"

Since she was attending college in another state, I asked, "Why are you expecting her there?"

"We don't show her as having graduated from high school," said the tired voice.  She clearly had been making truancy calls all morning, already, on the first day of school.

"She didn't," I said, "but she's in college right now, so I guess she won't be in high school any more."

Silence.  Then "How can she be at college if she doesn't have a high school diploma?"

"Well," I answered, "I guess you don't need one to go to college."

Which, my friends, is true.  My daughter, the high school drop out, graduated from college after three years.  Now, to be fair, she racked up some credits at the local community college, concurrent with her junior and senior year in high school, while still taking some classes of choice at the local high school.  But she opted out of high school graduation in the 9th grade when we pulled her out of a required 'transitions' class for 9th graders, designed to ease their path into high school, with such topics as library research and some school and community awareness topics that included knowing where the restrooms and exit doors are, and who did what and ran which club in the school.  Oh, and there was a lesson on where the index of a book was and what it was for. 

Do we really need 3 - 4.5 hours per week to teach this stuff to 9th graders?  Never mind that she was a straight-A student in middle school in the gifted program there as well.

I told them that I wanted her in an academic class.  The principal told me that he was NOT opting ANY freshmen out of the transitions class for any reason.  So I made her a homeschooler for that hour, with the understanding that since this course was required for graduation that she would then not be graduating from high school.  She was fine with that.  We cobbled together her high school education using some classes at the high school, some from the local community college in a program our state makes available to high school juniors and seniors with free tuition, and some homeschooling.

As long as that 'transitions' class was a requirement for graduation, and had to be taken in the 9th grade, I guess she would still be eligible for classes at the local high school forever.  I wonder if that's a theory worth testing.

So, come her senior year of high school, she researched and picked five colleges, and got accepted to three of them.  In August, off she went, to the one that offered her about a 3/5ths scholarship.

I learned later that I was supposed to name a graduation date, so I picked the day she registered to vote.

For a long time, a high school diploma hasn't meant that the student could read or write.  For that reason, most colleges DO NOT CARE if the student has been issued a high school diploma from a state-approved school.  Their criterion is the student's transcript, SAT or ACT scores, and some application materials that they require.  Homeschooled students can write their own transcript.  More on that, perhaps, in another blog.  Homeschooled students DO need to have a graduation date.  So pick one, and be sure to have a party.  When you fill out the FAFSA, answer 'yes' for diploma.  Your homeschool diploma is completely legitimate.  If asked, enter the graduation date you picked.

Know, that when your student gets to college, that there will be placement exams in several subjects.  No matter what courses your student has taken in high school or elsewhere, these exams will determine where your students starts in a sequence of courses such as math or English.  If remedial work must be done, these exams will identify that.

Once again, let me reiterate, that your job as parent is to get your student the BEST education you can.  Local public high schools often have some very strange hoops for kids to jump through, such as silly classes, standardized tests associated with the No Child Left Behind Act, senior projects, etc.  These can be worthwhile, or they can be worthless.  If  your child didn't get a high school diploma because s/he failed to jump through one of these hoops, apply to college anyway. 

You don't need a high school diploma to go to college.  You DO need a graduation date.  Be sure to have a party and take some photos.

If I had one educational reform...

The corollary to moving to a customer-service model of doing education is matching the pace of education to the child.

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.

The Industrial Manufacturing, Conveyor Belt model of modern education

What's wrong with most classroom settings, particularly public education settings, is that they use the industrial manufacturing, conveyor belt method of teaching, when they SHOULD be using the customer service model, as in What do you need?  How can we help you?

Kids learn to walk on the very day that God has ordained that will happen.  As a parent you can do absolutely nothing to hurry that day along.  For some, it's 8 or 9 months.  For others, it's 14 or 15 months.  The last is almost twice the age of the first.  Why in the world do we expect them all to be ready for school at 5 years of age?

If you're a parent reading this, and you have one of those kids for whom it makes your stomach knot to think of sending them to school for the first time next fall, then let me assure you as a college instructor:

We like them a little older than 18 when they get here, thank you very much!

That isn't to say an 18 year old can't be ready for college.  Some 16 year olds are ready.  But my observation is that the older students are much better students.  They've been out in the world, sometimes all around the world, and the experience they bring back to the classroom, the maturity, the insight, greatly enriches their education AND the education of the students around them.  And me.  Even in a math class.  Most 18 year olds need to go see the world before college.  Colleges love older students, too.

But perhaps you've read the brain studies that say the human brain is just finishing it's formation by 18-22 years of age, which is why an intensive learning setting is so good for them.  To which I ask, Why do you think they must be in a classroom to learn?

Perhaps you're afraid  your child won't be successful if they don't graduate by 18.  Kids aren't cars.  If a car falls off the assembly line, we can just junk it.  But an assembly line is the wrong model for a kid.  You can't junk a human being.  They require careful craftsmanship in the hands of a capable craftsman.  And would a car that has been twisted into an approximate shape after a manufacturing error be a good one to drive?  As a teacher of adults, I can tell you that I spend a lot of time trying to correct those errors.  It's sometimes easier if the student stepped off the conveyor belt before the damage was done, rather than "complete" high school with an imperfect understanding.

Let's go back to that 5 year old.  Frankly, I don't think 5-year olds ought to be in school anyway.  Kids need to be with their parents until they're about 8.  It doesn't hurt them to stay with their parents until they're about 21.  This notion that we must send them to school has totally overwhelmed the truth that as parents, we need to find the best instructor for that particular child, whoever that is!  Early on, it's US, the parents.  You'll know when you need to get help, because the child will be asking questions for which you don't have answers.

Don't worry about socializing them.  Kids don't have any trouble finding other kids with whom to socialize.  If you stay in control of their education,  you won't be needing to undo the curriculum of the bus that starts and ends their days, and you won't be having to undo much of the nonsense that passes for curriculum.  You can and should be supervising, and you can and should be welcome in any educational setting in which you place your child.

Most state constitutions in the US have a clause about the education of the young being of paramount importance.  And so we have legislated ourselves into forcing the state to do the job and make the decisions that belong to parents.  We tell ourselves that the state has done the job when the child graduates from high school by age 18, even though the truth of it is that almost 1/3 of students who start high school don't finish.  And that forces the state educators to define what a 9th grader looks like, and a 6th grader, and a kindergartner.  

So we plop them on the conveyor belt at age 5, roll this part flat there, screw this down here, push this in there, until they all look alike at the end.  We're so good at it that they all consent to wearing the oddest hat and the same color gown as all of their other conveyor belt companions, even looking as much alike as possible.  I don't know why we think we've made creative thinkers and capable problem solvers when they all look like that in the end.  Collective sheep, they are, drones for an industrial manufacturing, conveyor belt society.

I invite you to step off the conveyor belt.  If your child has already fallen off the conveyor belt, or if you were one who fell off, then rejoice!  You have an opportunity, and plenty of time as well, to step back, observe, figure out what to do next, and go do it.  Observe, observe, observe.  Be careful not to try to find another conveyor belt to solve the problem.  Maybe you need to let your child rest from the treadmill and not do anything but hike in the woods for a time, or dangle their feet in the lake.  As a long-time educator, I promise you, as long as you turn off the TV and throw out the computerized game machine and don't engage in substance abuse, that it will be ok!  More on what to do instead in a later blog.

I've got 50 year olds in my college classes.  So I assure you, there's plenty of time.

What qualifies me to write this blog?

My birth year is smack in the middle of the baby boomers, which means I started school just after Sputnik.  I grew up in a suburb of Seattle.  I remember pretty fondly of walking the four very short blocks to school for the first six years, then riding a bus for three terrible years at a Gr 7-9 junior high school, then again riding a bus for three decent years at a Gr. 10 - 12 high school.  

Did I get an education out of that?  No.  

Looking back, it was amazing to me how fast the educational desperation generated by Sputnik deteriorated into the liberal morass of the 60's and 70's.  An older sister, five years older than I, got Shakespeare during high school.  They were so happy that my group was reading that our teachers did not care what we read.  I remember asking for a list of materials required to be covered for the class, and was told there weren't any.  Hmm.

Being musically inclined, I started teaching private lessons about age 14 to pay for my own music lessons on piano, guitar, and voice.  That was my first foray into teaching.  I don't think I was very good at it, but I discovered I loved it.  I had a wonderful junior high band director during that time, and an excellent old-school math instructor.  It was the band director who made me think I wanted to do that for a living.

I attended two state universities in Washington state and took five years to graduate, partly because my Boeing engineer father, who was footing the bill, wanted me to NOT focus all of my efforts on music, partly because the math minor had course sequences taught only every other year, which delayed a course sequence I needed to be a music ed major, and partly because switching schools caused me to lose some credits toward graduation.  I tutored math some during this time, and enjoyed that.

I taught for two years in a school district of some 700 students, where I was the only music educator.  I saw every Gr 1-6 student once weekly for general music (get out your Girl Scout songs and have fun singing), and then did bands and choirs on the middle and high school level.  I was awful the first year, as every new teacher is.  The first year of teaching is kind of like doing puberty again - you're very awkward and do everything wrong.  I also moved three times, lost my mother to multiple diseases acquired in a bad blood transfusion (they weren't screening the blood supply when she got that transfusion about 1970), and was nearby when Mt. St. Helens erupted.  Regularly seeing students from every grade, from 1-12, was a huge part of my education about education.  I got a much better feel for what kids at different ages could do.  I also learned that what happened in my classroom wasn't all my fault.  Kids bring in baggage, like everyone else.

The second year followed a summer of continuing education required of educators, and I had a much better year.  I was hooked.

But after the second year, I married my college sweetheart and moved to where he had a business established.  It would be two more years before I had a classroom back again, but I worked in the music field and taught individuals and class guitar.  My next job was in a Gr 6 - 8 middle school teaching bands and choirs in one of those up-river communities in WA ("You know you're a redneck when...") and I did NOT belong there.  Frank Peretti wrote The Oath based on such a community.  I wanted kids to know something about music, just in case there might be some pursuing a career in that field.  The community's attitude was that they wanted their kids to have fun.  My job was a 1-year replacement contract, and I didn't get it back, thank God!

At the end of the summer, after a few interviews, I got a phone call from one of the island communities in WA.  Did I have a job yet?  No, so I went and interviewed the very next day.  I was actually hired on the 3rd day of school to do some K-6 general music, one class of algebra, beginning band, and a band that combined middle and high school.  The islands have a lot of artists in their population, and as an artist in an arts community, I could do no wrong.  I loved my job, and the community loved me, especially after I got a 10-member band to play at a football game.  Half the band was in the team on the field, which consisted of nearly every boy in the high school.  It was a great place and I have many fond memories, even if no one there remembers me.

That was also a one-year replacement contract for a teacher on leave, so my husband didn't plan to move his business to the island.  I rented a place on the island, he came to see me in the middle of the week, I took the ferry home on the weekends.  But I was hired for a second year, and my first child arrived in December.  When I went back to work in February, she went with me.  At first we continued our weekend commute, but we found a private pilot working to chalk up hours toward a commercial license, who would fly us back and forth for gas only.  Ten bucks each way, in 1986.  It was wonderful getting to work that way, but that was pretty much my paycheck.  There was a sort of community grandma on the island who was able to bring her to me at lunch.  It was lovely, but it was silly.

So the following year, I took a part-time job as the morning teacher at a small local Christian school, doing a classroom of 12 kids that contained grades 4-8.  We used the Abeka video school curriculum, which I thought was an excellent curriculum, but was akin to online education today.  More about that in a later blog, perhaps.

In November of 1987, my son was born, and for that year I was a stay-at-home mom, the only year I did not work at all.

The following fall I began substitute teaching in local area schools, and began getting regular work because I was a capable music teacher.  My sight-singing/reading skills had been well honed in college, and I could actually teach a lesson in the music classrooms.  I also substituted math, and most other subject areas, and that was a huge contribution to my education about education.  I learned about teachers, how hard they work, which ones I learn from when they're not even in the room.

My kids were 3 and 5 when I started work on my MA Ed, also at the local state university.  More on that later.  I had a graduate assistantship to do that, so I taught a class on education to pre-service educators as part of that assistantship.  Some of them were Master's-level students, acquiring their teaching certificate while getting their MA Ed.  

My kids did some pre-school while I was working on that degree, and to help pay for that, I did some work at the pre-school, too.

I began hanging out in my kids' classrooms when they began school.  I brought my guitar one day, kinda pushed my way into doing a half-hour of singing, made sure that the songs I brought in also supported what the teachers were trying to teach, and was welcome every week for that half hour.  I spent perhaps 4 more hours per week, doing whatever was handy to help those educators.  I knew how to run a photocopier, organize a bookshelf, supplement a lesson, and help kids with their lessons.

I tutored math at a local tutoring agency, using a model that would greatly influence my thinking about the way we teach math and science.  More blog on that later, as well.

Then I applied for a part-time job actually in the same building with my kids, as the music teacher for that building.  When it was awarded to an English major with good  piano and vocal skills, I decided that was my last effort at a K-12 job in public education.

That same fall, 1994, some homeschoolers who had seen me at the math tutoring agency requested I do some math classes for their kids.  Since the music job in my kids building didn't come through, we began doing that.  Twelve kids to start, three levels of math.  Twice-weekly classes, for 75 minutes each meeting.  I really began to learn about education.  I now administrate that group, and we use 13 instructors to teach more than 40 classes to about 125 students.  We support home-schooling, and usually pick up the kids where their parents are feeling less competent about the curriculum.  Lots more blog on that later.

I was also hired to teach math at the local community college, and I serve as adjunct math faculty there.  I do NOT want to be full time there.  I want to continue to work with my homeschoolers.  There are many good things about working at our community college.  It is the institute of second chances, and I love that part about community colleges.

So, I've taught full time and part-time, and I've substitute-taught.

I've taught pre-K to university level.

I've taught privately and in classrooms.

I've been in public and private, secular schools.

I've been the teacher and the administrator, at the same time.

The only thing I haven't done is be a single parent while trying to teach.  God help those of you in that situation.

My two children are grown now, both out of the house.  My daughter finished college at age 21 with a degree in biology, and works as a veterinary technician while preparing to do her own veterinary program some day.  My son is not yet academic material, but is finishing a tech-college program in a trade, is gainfully employed and having a lot of fun with life.  He may yet go do something in design or engineering, but has more possibilities in front of him than he can possibly pursue.

I have enough observations about how we do school to fill up this blog.  I'll get to them as I get angry enough to post.

Future topics:

The industrial manufacturing model of education.

Technology in education.

If I had one educational reform...

Other reforms I would implement.

You don't need a diploma to go to college.

Visual and auditory learners.

Arts in education.

Teaching in a moral vacuum.

Who should run schools?

Parent directed education.

Homeschoolers at the top and bottom.

More as I think about it.