Part II - What We Want for Our Students
Our "Hopes and Dreams" for Student Success
The previous post began with a description of our board’s goal for students exiting our school system in the area of character and citizenship. Whether they move on to other level(s) of higher education or directly into the job market, all our graduates need to be well grounded in those character traits and citizenship skills that lead to success in life.
I also mentioned an education researcher (Todd Rose) with a remarkable life story, told a few chapters of that story, and ended with an introduction to his research into the purpose of education that can be instructive to school board members and others.
This article will offer more detail from the Purpose of Education study and some links to his writing.
Executive Summary
The Purpose of Education Index represents the first of its kind private opinion study of the American people’s priorities for the future of education in America. It uses tools and methodologies that minimize distortions found in many traditional public opinion polls and reveal not only what Americans want most — and least — from our K-12 education system, but also what they believe about other people’s priorities. The results are consequential for educators, parents, policymakers, or anyone interested in the future of K-12 education in America.
01 College Should No Longer Be the End Goal of K-12 Education: Conventional wisdom, and decades of social engineering, have told us that the point of K-12 education is to make students college-bound — often to the most prestigious one possible. Before COVID, respondents ranked being prepared to enroll in a college or university as their 10th highest priority for K-12 education. In post-COVID America, this is no longer the case. When given 57 priorities for children’s K-12 education, Americans ranked it as #47. However they believe it is everyone else’s third-highest priority, demonstrating a deep societal misunderstanding.
02 Practical Skills & Outcomes Should Be the End Goal: Americans want K-12 education to be focused on practical, tangible skills and outcomes. Respondents reported development of practical skills (e.g. manage personal finances, prepare a meal, make an appointment) as the #1 priority for education outcomes. Other highly rated purposes: demonstrates basic reading, writing, and arithmetic (#4), prepared for a career (#6), effectively plan, and prioritize to achieve a goal (#11), and have the skills to be competitive in the local job market (#12.) They vastly outperformed less practical or short term goals such as prepared for a paid internship or entry level job (#40), students learn social norms and appropriate behavior (#52), and students develop athletic talents (#56). And while respondents do not want schools instructing students on social norms (#52), they firmly believe that a student demonstrating character (e.g. honesty, kindness, integrity, and ethics) should be a vital marker of a school’s success (#3).
03 Individualized Education Is the Future, One-Size-Fits-All Is the Past: One-size-fits-all approaches to K-12 education turn off the vast majority of Americans. Respondents believe students should advance once they have demonstrated mastery of a subject (#7) rather than when they pass an arbitrary test. In fact student success being evaluated based on standardized tests was ranked as a bottom 10 priority (#49). Students having the time they need to learn at their own pace is ranked 13th-highest priority. In the same vein, respondents believe that all students should receive the unique support that they need (#5) rather than all students receiving the same level of support (#34). Generally, Americans do not care if all students study the same thing (#54) compared to them getting to choose courses based on their individual interests (#9). Data clearly illustrates that individualized and tailored approaches that recognize students’ unique needs are preferred.
04 Education Priorities Vary Immensely by Race: While developing critical thinking and practical skills were common across racial groups, there are noticeable differences by group, further indicating that the current one-size-fits-all approach to education fails to address the needs and wants of students and parents. Being prepared to be a productive member of society is the fifth-highest priority for Hispanics compared to White (#48), Black (#39), and Asian (#30) respondents. Black respondents were the only group to have a student being able to leverage technology to accomplish complex needs as a top five (#5) priority. The next highest was White respondents at #20. Black respondents ranked students advance with a teacher’s determination of readiness as their third-highest priority compared to White (#55), Hispanic (#35), and Asian (#52) respondents. Similarly, students advance if they meet minimum grade requirements was the #1 priority among Hispanic respondents — the only racial group to prioritize that higher than #38. Asian respondents are the only racial demographic to have prepared to enroll in a college or university as a top 10 priority (#9) — the only group staying near the pre-COVID priority level. Black (#4) and Asian (#3) respondents had students understand and know how to participate in democracy as a top four priority compared to White (#21) and Hispanic (#29) respondents.
05 “Better” Is No Longer the Goal — “Different” Is: One of the most prevalent threads across the data illustrates that Americans are fed up with the current education system, beyond the point of wanting improvements to the existing structure. The vast majority of the general population believes more things about the educational system should change than stay the same (71%), including 21% who say nearly everything should change. Better is no longer the goal — something entirely different is. Whether it is wanting a greater focus on practical skills, individualized learning experiences, or reorienting the end goals, Americans’ priorities for K-12 education are largely absent from the current system.
An hour-long video addresses the findings of this study: The Purpose of Education
Bibliography. Todd Rose’s books (links included):
Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions published in 2022. He tells of collective illusions, when people in a group adopt a view they don't agree with because they mistakenly believe others support it, leading to actions nobody truly wants.
Dark Horse: Achieving success through the pursuit of fulfillment, Co-authored with Ogi Ogas in 2018. The book describes interests and abilities of people in society that nobody expects to be successful but are successful in their own way.
The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness, 2017. This book is about the measurement of human potential through a one-size-fits-all model which is incorrect as each individual has different capabilities.
Square Peg: My Story and What it Means for Raising Innovators, Visionaries, and Out of the Box Thinkers, Co-authored with Katherine Ellison in 2013, this book provides Rose’s story and offers insights for the current American school system.
Your Turn – I’ve shared some of our district’s thoughts about the community’s desired student outcomes. What are your thoughts on the Purpose of Education? (Please share)
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