Philip Greenspun ponders alternatives to the expensive but unremarkable public school system in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Here we are in 2003 and the city apparently is spending $17,000 per year for each remaining student (still the most expensive in Massachusetts) to achieve some of the lowest test scores of any district in the state.
...If we spent a bit of money on personal video conferencing setups for each kid, we could spend the rest hiring PhDs in low-wage English-speaking countries to teaching our city's children one-on-one. Actually the way the U.S. economy has been going we might be able to find home-grown humanities PhDs to do the tutoring face-to-face for $17k/year (that's about what they are getting now at Starbucks).
Like any another system, there are several inputs, only one of which is money. The others are more abstract in terms of understanding the benefits. Competition, via school vouchers is one way. Another is to reengineer the society to pay more respect and gratitude to teachers (at least, to the teachers that get results, not to the disaffected civil servants that wound up as teachers because they couldn't find a better career path.) The career of teacher in the U.S. seems to be the last recourse of people who couldn't find anything better to do. And for those few enthusiastic teachers who are competent and effective, they frequently give up on the system and leave, and go to places where their talent is rewarded (or if they still want to teach, they will end up in private schools.)
I don't agree that Ph.D's are any less likely to be disaffected teachers than the current crowd. I've met too many people with advanced degrees that turned out not to be so smart. But regardless of advanced qualifications, we need to find the people who are good at teaching, and make the job appealing to them. And then we need to give them the support to fight their way through a bureaucracy that will try to resist the change and protect its own entrenched fiefdom.
Yup, it is time for another revolution here too.
11:11:43 AM 
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