Robert Rubinstein's Writings & Ideas

THE "BUSINESS" OF EDUCATION

by Robert Rubinstein

The education mantra is: "Let’s run the public schools as we would a business.”

Public education is a very big business with 14,343 public schools in our nation. Any business this size must re-invent and re-tool itself at least every ten years to stay current. Schools are about teaching and learning skills for the future, not the present. Yet, the average age of schools in this country is 42 years old. The oldest, most deteriorated and technologically out-dated schools can be found, as expected, in a city’s poverty areas.

Quality businesses provide training and resources for employees to make certain they have access to the most up-to-date technology and learning. One of the first items cut from school budgets is teacher-training and support services. New textbooks can be $50 to over $100 dollars or more apiece, so many schools have textbooks that are ten, twenty, or more years old. Imagine how this affects the teaching of science, computers, math, and history/ current events.

Successful businesses hire work-experienced managers or directors who lead and inspire, and offer constructive support. Many school administrators have little or no classroom teaching experience and make decisions based, on ignorance, skewed perceptions, or politics. Administrators should be knowledgeable and in the classroom to evaluate teachers; they should not base their judgments of teacher quality on mainly student test results. (What businesses in society constantly evaluate employees based on repeated paper-testing?)

Good businesses create a favorable environment for employees to work effectively. How do you work effectively with 40 students in a room? (Scientists have conducted experiments to show what behaviors happen when too many rats are jammed into a space. Imagine what it’s like when this is the case with young people.) Studies have shown that the most effective teaching is done with classes no larger than 25. How do students learn when the lighting, heating and air quality are not healthy?

The best people work for a business because it offers good wages, benefits, and working conditions. The average teacher’s salary in America’s public schools is about $46,000. Today’s future teachers are likely to graduate with college debts of $30,000 to $70,000 (especially with the required master’s degree). Within five years, despite the cost of their college education, nearly half the new teachers quit due to low pay, low morale, poor working conditions, safety, administration incompetence, or intimidation. Businesses cannot operate successfully if their employees are laboring under such conditions.

Who’s teaching and training our future teachers - supposedly instructors and professors in the colleges of education. However, many of these have left classroom teaching because they weren’t successful or disliked working with children, and many professors of education have never even taught in a public school classroom. Who evaluates what colleges of education are teaching our future teachers? Few teachers want to return to these college education classes.

Now, add to the "business" the board that makes policies and decisions. A look at education committees at the federal, state and local levels will find that the people making decisions about what’s best for students and learning are mostly politicians, business people, college instructors and administrators. The people rarely represented on these committees and seldom actually involved in decisions about teaching and learning are the classroom teachers – the ones with the knowledge, training, and experience.

This is the business of education – or education as a "business.” However, unlike a business that produces a product, education deals with people. Each student has his or her own way of learning, understanding and behaving. Each student comes with a home life, parents, and a socio-economic background that profoundly affects that student’s abilities and desire to learn. Each classroom teacher must learn to deal with 40 students in a class, meeting perhaps 200-250 students a day if teaching at the secondary school.

According to a U.S. Department of Education report, public schools teach math and reading more effectively than do most charter and private schools. In addition, private and some charter schools select the students they will allow to enroll and have far fewer students in a class. This selection is often influenced by political., religious or economic status. Private schools are not required to test students for progress, or may choose to only test certain groups of students, not all students, as the public schools are required to do.

If a business expects a quality "product," then the business must first invest in meaningful ways to build a solid foundation with an evolving infrastructure. With our schools and students, this means focusing people and resources to"produce"students with the skills to think, learn, understand, and apply knowledge, not parrot back useless dates and facts on tests.