15 YEAR OLDS SOLVE NATIONAL EDUCATION PROBLEM USING STEEMIT
In an after school geek out session with some of my students, I posed a question. How do we as a nation improve schools? The discussion with 16 year olds was ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC! We ended up breaking the problem into five basic parts.
- Improve teaching
- Improve learning
- Improve parent accountability
- Incentivize good teaching, learning and parenting
- Give consequences for bad teaching, learning and parenting
Everyone who has ever been a student has had a favorite or best teacher.
We all have had that crappy, non-caring, unprepared check collector who was waiting to retire.
The number one way to improve student achievement is to increase the quality of teaching that occurs. Part of that endeavor includes best lesson plans, best instructional strategies, best class management, best feedback and best assessments. Teachers should be good instructors and good managers of people time and resources. But shouldn’t the student have some responsibility,” I asked, playing devil’s advocate?
Yeah, students should pay attention, be compliant and cooperative, take good notes, do homework, stay organized, and study for quizzes and tests. Students should “be cool with one another”, be good school citizens, be responsible online and be respectful. Basically students should be good students and be good people. A teacher can be stellar but a student can just flat out choose to be difficult or unwilling to learn. “What about parents’ part?”
The general consensus about parents was that they should be involved cooperative, supportive, trusting and responsible for making their kid(s) good students and good people. Some parents are too tired or too busy or don’t know how to parent effectively. Some just flat out don’t care. Some are great parents who have developed scholar athletes who are great students and great people. “A lot of times though, classes and schools are hindered by the volume of challenges that the bad kids inflict on the rest of us.” Wow... that was the perspective of a freshman student!
HERE IS MY QUESTION... How do we make teachers teach their best, students learn their best and parents make their kids accountable? Mind you, this is my nerdy but cool group of kids that I can talk to about various topics. We have talked about Bitcoin, investing, coding, politics, world issues, etc. As I was checking my steemit feed, an idea hit me. What If we don’t have to MAKE them?
WHAT IF WE COULD INCENTIVIZE THE WHOLE SYSTEM? What if teachers could receive partial salary and partial payment from UPVOTES? The upvotes could be based on quality of lessons plans, quality of class management, quality of instruction and quality of student improvement. What if students could receive upvotes based on their behavior, attendance and grades? Lastly, what if parents received upvotes based on their involvement, support and their kid’s success at school (socially and academically)? A parent could get upvotes for having their kid have 90+% attendance or downvotes for attendance under 90%. A student could get a downvote for skipping class or get upvotes for an A or B. A teacher get an upvote for 90 % of their class earning A’s or downvotes for poor attendance or horrible lesson plans.
A student asked, “Wouldn’t teachers just give A’s to everybody if the get upvotes, thus more compensation?” Hmmmm. How about making a national standardized end of unit assessment and a standardized end of course assessment. That way it’s not the subjective grade that the upvote is based on, but the exhibited mastery of specific skills that are attached to a specific course or grade level.
What about the really crappy parent, the one who just doesn’t care about incentives. A student came up with this answer that totally shocked me! The system has to be able to be punitive for the excessively horrible. If a parent is going to let their kid skip class (school), fight, bring drugs, be disruptive, etc, then the system should charge them. “How do you make them pay, I asked?” You don’t... you just don’t let them get government assistance or tax refunds. If they don’t get assistance or a refund, you increase their taxes until they and their kid is in good standing. I mean their kid is costing other students around them a better educational experience. Let’s make THEM and their parents pay for it. I bet if you attach money to their kids issue, they’ll be more likely to address those issue.
How would teachers receive consequences. The tenured paycheck collector who can be extremely difficult to fire, has to be subject to consequences. Crappy teaching cannot be allowed to persist behind a shield of a strong teacher’s union. Consistent failure to meet minimum standards in most other fields results in dismissal from the position.
WELL THERE YOU HAVE IT. A GROUP OF GEEKED OUT KIDS AND PRINCIPAL SOLVING THE NATION’S EDUCATION WOES, USING STEEMIT STRUCTURE AS ITS BASE.
I know we kind of oversimplified some of the processes. We know the problems and thus solutions can be complex. Sometimes child-like simplicity is the answer. I just love the fact that students thought outside the box and challenged everyone’s thinking!
What do you think?
Incentivization for good teaching and a rewards system could definitely be done on steemit if a sub community was formed or if someone launched a Smart Media Token for this purpose it would also create a means for a rewards system that operates on the steem blockchain but is its own token.
I don't know all the ins and outs of creating a SMT but there are people who will be launching their own this year and that's part of what is driving speculation that STEEM will appreciate in value quite a bit in the future.
Nice post and discussion about the topic. There's definitely teachers who are just there for the paycheck (which varies greatly depending on where one lives) but there are also some outstanding ones. It would be nice to be able to reward the good ones with a bit of a bonus somehow and using blockchain tech sounds like a good idea.
What’s cool is that kids thought of it! I wish I would have recorded the discussion itself and put it on dtube.
Excellent. I remember when parents would take elementary kids to school to sign up on the door of the teacher they wanted to assign their kids too for the year.... fist come, first served. So the teacher's reputation was important!
Add student accountability to the list and regardless of whether or not you use a steemit approach, then you will be on the right track of improving the education system.
Keep it up, post an image with your post to get more clicks.
Thanks for the tip. Will do!