A New Operating System for K–12 Education

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Teaching is an art as much as it may be a science.  I liken it to conducting an orchestra.  Just as the conductor leads his orchestra, the teacher guides his class.  The conductor ensures that each musician is playing at the right tempo and volume, and the teacher ensures that each student is on task and contributing to the best of his abilities.  Different conductors will lead their orchestras to perform the same piece of music in slightly different ways just as different teachers will teach the same subject in slightly different ways.

Unlike orchestras, where each performance stands alone, successive classroom lessons and academic years build on one another.  This is to fulfill the core function of our schools: to prepare the next generation with the knowledge and the skills they need to succeed.  It is not hyperbole to say that our societies and civilizations depend on well educated citizens.  To develop those citizens, teachers undergo training; read professional journals; attend workshops, seminars, and conventions; and pursue advanced degrees. 

Having spent many years working in this field, one thing I noticed was the tendency for educators to eagerly jump onto whatever new educational bandwagon was making the rounds.  Teachers get excited when we come across a new technique or practice that we think may help our students derive more benefit and enjoyment from our classes.  Sadly, some of these practices prove to be unworkable, and the widespread incorporation of these new techniques is sometimes less than successful.

I would see an article in our professional journals singing the praises of a new concept or technique that had its roots in someone’s master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation, and there would be stories of teachers or even entire schools putting those ideas into practice and seeing encouraging results.  But then, in a relatively short period of time, the concept would gradually fall out of favor, to be replaced by whatever new practice was getting all the attention in the journals.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

Another issue was dealing with mandates from administrators, who were under orders from local agencies, who were under orders from state agencies, who received orders from the federal level.  Those of us working in the trenches resisted making changes for their own sake when we were seeing good results with our own techniques.  What works for one teacher doesn’t always work for another, even if we’re both teaching the same subject to the same type of students.  A principle of ecology applies here: “everything depends on everything else.”

The successful presentation of academic material depends on innumerable, ever-changing physical and psychological elements of the teacher and each student in the class.  Other factors are the environmental conditions of the room, the weather, outside events such as proximity to weekends and holidays, major civic or school events, and so on.  The classroom teacher has to gather the students’ attention, focus it on the matter at hand, and keep it there — a daunting task.   

In the fall of 2023, the Hoover Institution formed a council to analyze the state of America’s public education system and make recommendations.  The Hoover Institution is, among other things, “a public policy think tank that seeks to improve the human condition by advancing ideas that promote economic opportunity and prosperity.”  This council indicated that dramatic action in our public education system “is a matter of public emergency” and that “half of the public school students in the US cannot meet basic state proficiency standards, even when those standards are set perilously low.”

They found what we teachers already knew: that top-down mandates may have been well intentioned, but, since they were instituted unilaterally and in isolation from other factors, they created unintended consequences, resistance, and a tendency among practitioners to maintain the status quo.  Rather than instituting a single teaching technique isolated from other factors, they proposed constructing an entirely new “operating system” of education that would have a “true north” of student achievement as its end.

This new operating system has four interdependent components: 1) clear details of student outcomes with an objective assessment of student performance, 2) local control beginning at the classroom level, 3) minimizing mandates and offering incentives for teachers and schools with accountability for student performance, and 4) enhancing the professional standing of administrators and faculty.

Rather than mandates from on high, the council recommends classroom teachers being given the discretion to manage their own classrooms and their instructional techniques in ways that best meet the needs of their own students in achieving the stated academic goals.  Educators and administrators at local, state, and national levels then gather the results and form knowledge bases to disseminate successful techniques back down through the chain.  Incentives and opportunities for professional enhancement will encourage and motivate faculty members and administrators.

I was impressed with the work of the Hoover Institution.  They have proposed turning the entire educational process upside-down so that it works from the ground up rather than the top down.  But what I found lacking in their study is the same thing that is lacking in other studies and recommendations of this sort.  The great Thomas Sowell mentions it from time to time: that too many solutions start in the middle.  They attempt to solve a problem after it’s well advanced rather than addressing the causative factors that created the problem in the first place.

As is true with many of our problems today, what we identify as the cause may actually be symptomatic of deeper problems.  Though I was impressed with the thoroughness of the report from the Hoover Institution, I couldn’t help but think of the elephant in the room.  They discussed the successes of public charter schools and homeschooling, and they made specific reference to the numbers of students being transferred out of public schools into those educational alternatives.  But they never discussed why that movement is occurring, nor did they discuss the successes of parochial schools, which are primary or secondary schools supported by a religious organization or church.

Parents who homeschool their children or who send their children to charter schools or parochial schools while still being forced to pay taxes for public schools have skin in the game.  These parents might place a higher value on education, stress its importance to their children, and make financial sacrifices to ensure that their children get it.  They are likely to be more proactive in seeing that their children complete their work and behave properly in school.

Although the Hoover Institution praised the talent, dedication, and professionalism of America’s teachers and administrators, they did not mention the curriculum that may frame America’s founders as racist slave owners and the country as being established on stolen land.  They did not mention the administrators who put graphic pornography in K–12 school libraries, or the teachers who use instructional time to lecture their students on CRT, DIE, and LGBT issues.  They did not discuss how enabling their students to access hormone-blockers and abortions while withholding information from their parents destroys trust and causes parents to transfer their students out of that school.

It is to be hoped that such issues will arise at the third and fourth levels of the Hoover Institution proposal, which involve accountability and professionalism.

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