essay on our school system

Why we must transform our education systems, now

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, the hon. minister david sengeh and the hon. minister david sengeh minister of education and chief innovation officer - government of sierra leone, chief innovation officer - directorate of science, technology and innovation in sierra leone rebecca winthrop rebecca winthrop director - center for universal education , senior fellow - global economy and development.

June 23, 2022

This blog summarizes the research “ Transforming education systems: Why, what, and how .”

Every single day, the challenges of global education become more daunting and more urgent. Just a few days ago on June 21, the United Nations reported that as many as 222 million school-aged children impacted by crisis require urgent educational support — this number is three times the estimates from 2016.  Furthermore, as currently reported by the World Bank and UNICEF, the portion of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries during the pandemic who could not read a simple story is estimated to have grown from about 50 percent to over 70 percent today. The poorest children and those living in remote regions have been hit the hardest. We are at a critical inflection point with hundreds of millions of children likely to miss out on a quality education in the very moment where we have to confront climate change, increasing conflict, and renewed pandemic risks. Alarm bells are being sounded and the United Nations secretary general has invited political leaders, policymakers, youth, and all stakeholders to join him at the Transforming Education Summit (TES) in New York in September 2022 to make commitments that will transform education.   

We agree that something different and transformational needs to happen now. But what does transformation mean, anyway?   

Here we share a condensed version of our perspective on how policymakers can better understand what it means and most importantly get started with making significant commitments for action. We don’t have the final answers, but we want to share the perspective of a global think tank that has studied the development of education systems over the past 100 years and a national government from a low-income country in the midst of an education transformation. You can read the full report here and the executive summary here .  

What is education system transformation?  

At its core, system transformation must entail a fresh review of the goals of our education systems. There must be a frank assessment — are the goals meeting the moment that we are in and are they owned broadly across society? If the answer is “no,” then transformation means repositioning all components of the education system to coherently contribute to a new, shared purpose.  

We hope that countries and local stakeholders can use these insights to take the [education] transformation journey forward wherever they are.

We propose three steps centered on purpose, pedagogy, and position that embed a participatory, inclusive approach as the key to successful transformation.  

Step 1: Start with purpose  

Education leaders, families, teachers, and students can have very different expectations about the purpose of their education system. Without a broadly shared vision in and outside of the education system, any attempt at transformation will have a slim chance of success. When education leaders do take the time to have meaningful conversations with diverse stakeholders about the goals of education, it can help pave the way for a broadly shared vision. Such a shared vision has played a key role in successful reforms in Portugal, Finland, and Canada.    

In Sierra Leone, the most recent education sector plan was developed after careful and thorough consultations with a wide group of stakeholders. In addition to the national and local government, partner countries and civil society organizations, the government has made a point of consulting previously excluded groups like the bike riders union, the market women’s associations, and traditional and religious leaders across the country. Given the deep inequality in students’ learning in Sierra Leone which was highlighted by all stakeholders, the education sector plan and strategy prioritize foundational learning not as an end goal but as the floor to give every child a chance for longer-term educational success. And the country now puts the children who are currently learning the least at the front of its efforts thanks to its Policy on Radical Inclusion in Schools.   

Step 2: (Re)design the pedagogical core  

The second step is to (re)design teaching and learning experiences to ensure students achieve the system’s stated goals. Unfortunately, redesigning education systems often results in limited results for children’s learning and development. We need to focus more on what students are expected to learn — not just how that content is delivered—and we need to pay special attention to those who are learning the least.   

Some of the most promising results that take this approach to heart in recent years come from a practice called Teaching at the Right Level. Grouping children by ability level and conducting interactive learning activities for a period of time each day is at the core of this methodology. Real-time assessments provide data needed to move students on to higher level groups as they master skills. The approach is most effective for education systems that have large numbers of students failing to master literacy and numeracy by the end of primary school and where the default teaching approach is whole group instruction, even with very large class sizes.   

In Sierra Leone, the country has joined the first cohort of World Bank Accelerator Program countries to explicitly change its pedagogical core to support foundational learning. In addition, the country has launched the Sierra Leone Education Innovation Challenge to generate key evidence on what can help improve learning outcomes. Several of the service providers are adopting Teaching at the Right Level to improve learning outcomes. Initial signs are positive for our learning outcomes, as even with COVID-19 disruptions, we do not have major learning losses even if no gains were made.   

Step 3: Position and align system components  

Next, the system must be positioned to support the pedagogical core across the following six components: (1) Curriculum, (2) Human resources, (3) Data and assessment, (4) Governance, (5) Funding, and (6) Engagement of “winners” and “losers” in the alignment process.  

In Sierra Leone, the government has recently updated the preprimary, basic, senior secondary, civic, and technical and vocational education and training (TVET) curricula. In addition, the country has paid special attention to using data to support the realignment behind the updated  pedagogical core while investing in teacher training at all levels.   

Before 2018, Sierra Leone had little detailed information about who its education system served and who it left out. Data collection had used paper-based questionnaires, and, as a result, data were often lagging by up to a year and scattered across multiple government departments. Sierra Leone set about digitizing its annual school census and cut the data collection time to 10 weeks. By also carefully updating the questions asked, Sierra Leone shed light on who was left out of the system. Now the Annual School Census is both gender-disaggregated and asks about the disability status of the students and the accessibility of the classrooms. Moreover, the Ministry digitized and linked education data going all the way back to 2015. This gave the Ministry a data-driven starting point for addressing disparities within the education system, and it remains a crucial component supporting its goals of developing a more inclusive system, including for pregnant girls and children with disabilities.   

What now?  

We believe that there is much to learn from history and solutions currently being implemented around the world to help us. As Minister Sengeh’s Co-Chair of the TES Advisory Committee and the Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohamed recently said: “This is not ‘t’ for tweaking. This is ‘T’ for Transformation.” We hope that countries and local stakeholders can use these insights to take the transformation journey forward wherever they are — and for those that are further along on the path, please do share your experiences with us and the world. We look forward to adding your learnings and lessons to the collective effort to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4—quality education for all.   

Global Education

Global Economy and Development

Center for Universal Education

Brad Olsen, Molly Curtiss Wyss, Maya Elliott

September 12, 2024

Magdalena Rodríguez Romero

September 10, 2024

September 6, 2024

Essay on How to Improve Our Education System

Students are often asked to write an essay on How to Improve Our Education System in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on How to Improve Our Education System

Identifying the issues.

Our education system has some flaws. It’s often focused on rote learning, not creativity. Also, it doesn’t cater to different learning styles.

Adopting a Holistic Approach

We should focus on holistic development, not just academics. This includes sports, arts, and social skills.

Personalized Learning

Every student learns differently. So, we should use technology to personalize education.

Teacher Training

Teachers need continuous training to stay updated. More resources should be allocated for this.

Parental Involvement

By addressing these issues, we can enhance our education system.

250 Words Essay on How to Improve Our Education System

Introduction.

Education is the cornerstone of societal progress. However, in the face of rapidly evolving global challenges, our education system must adapt and innovate. To improve our education system, we need to focus on three key areas: curriculum development, teaching methodologies, and assessment strategies.

Curriculum Development

Building a relevant curriculum is vital. It should not just be limited to textbook knowledge but also include real-world issues, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills. Incorporating technology and digital literacy into the curriculum is essential to prepare students for the digital age.

Teaching Methodologies

Traditional lecture-based teaching methods need to evolve. Active learning strategies such as project-based learning, flipped classrooms, and collaborative group work should be encouraged. These methods stimulate student engagement and foster a deeper understanding of the subject matter.

Assessment Strategies

Assessment should be more than just testing memory. Evaluations should measure a student’s understanding, creativity, and ability to apply knowledge. Formative assessments, which provide ongoing feedback, can help students identify their strengths and areas for improvement.

500 Words Essay on How to Improve Our Education System

Education is the cornerstone of society, providing the foundation for personal growth, social development, and economic prosperity. However, the current education system, predominantly based on rote learning and standardized tests, has been criticized for not adequately preparing students for the challenges of the 21st century. This essay explores how we can improve our education system to foster creativity, critical thinking, and lifelong learning.

Embracing Technology

Technology has revolutionized every sector, and education should be no exception. Integrating technology into the classroom can enhance learning by making it more interactive and engaging. For instance, digital platforms can offer personalized learning experiences tailored to each student’s pace and level of understanding. Moreover, virtual reality and augmented reality can provide immersive learning experiences, making abstract concepts more tangible.

Student-Centered Learning

Curriculum reform, assessment reform.

Assessment methods need to evolve beyond standardized tests, which often measure rote memorization rather than understanding. Alternative assessment methods like portfolios, presentations, and peer assessments can provide a more comprehensive picture of a student’s abilities. These methods not only assess knowledge but also skills like communication, collaboration, and creativity.

Teacher Training and Support

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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Best Education Essays of 2021: Our 15 Most Discussed Columns About Schools, COVID Slide, Learning Recovery & More

A full calendar year of education under COVID-19 and its variants gave rise to a wave of memorable essays in 2021, focusing both on the ongoing damage done and how to mitigate learning loss going forward.

While consensus emerged around several key themes — the need for extensive, in-depth tutoring, the possibilities presented by unprecedented millions in federal relief dollars for schools, the opportunity for education reimagined — there was far less agreement on whether to remediate or accelerate, which health and safety measures schools should employ, even how dire the shortage of teachers and school staff really is. 

From grade-level standards and hygiene theater to lessons from the Spanish flu and homeschooling, here are the 15 most read and buzzed-about essays of 2021:

Analysis: Focus on Grade-Level Standards or Meet Students Where They Are? How an Unintentional Experiment Guided a Strategy for Addressing Learning Loss

Learning Recovery: What’s the best way to support learning recovery in middle-grade math? Should schools stay focused on grade-level standards while trying to address critical learning gaps as best as they can? Or should they systematically address individual students’ unfinished learning from prior years so they can ultimately catch back up — even if that means spending meaningful time teaching below-grade skills? As educators and administrators wrestle with those questions as they prepare to return to school in the fall, contributor Joel Rose offers some guidance inadvertently found in a study of Teach to One , an innovative learning model operated by New Classrooms Innovation Partners, the nonprofit where he is co-founder and CEO. That research found performance in schools with accountability systems that focused on grade-level proficiency (and thus prioritized grade-level exposure) grew 7 percentile points, while those that operated under systems that rewarded student growth (and thus prioritized individual student needs) grew 38 points. While the study was never intended to compare results across schools in this way, the stark difference between the two groups could not be ignored. Math is cumulative, and the path to proficiency often requires addressing unfinished learning from prior years. For the middle grades, administrators and policymakers would be wise to question the grade-level-only gospel as they begin to plan students’ educational recovery. Read the full analysis . 

Lessons from Spanish Flu — Babies Born in 1919 Had Worse Educational, Life Outcomes Than Those Born Just Before or After. Could That Happen With COVID-19?

History: Contributor Chad Aldeman has some bad news: The effects of COVID-19 are likely to linger for decades. And if the Spanish Flu is any indication, babies born during the pandemic may suffer some devastating consequences . Compared with children born just before or after, babies born during the flu pandemic in 1919 were less likely to finish high school, earned less money and were more likely to depend on welfare assistance and serve time in jail. The harmful effects were twice as large for nonwhite children. It may take a few years to see whether similar educational and economic effects from COVID-19 start to materialize, but these are ominous findings suggesting that hidden economic factors may influence a child’s life in ways that aren’t obvious in the moment. Hopefully, they will give policymakers more reasons to speed economic recovery efforts and make sure they deliver benefits to families and children who are going to need them the most. Read the full essay .

Pittman & Darling-Hammond: Surveys Find Parents Want Bold Changes in Schools — With More Learning Inside and Outside the Classroom

Future of Education: Whatever they thought of their schools before the pandemic struck, parents now have strong opinions about what they want them to provide. They are looking beyond fall reopenings to rethink schooling, and they care about having good choices for interest-driven learning opportunities beyond the classroom . Two national parent surveys released in May shed new light on how to think about the often-used phrase “more and better learning.” Among the key findings, write contributors Karen Pittman and Linda Darling-Hammond: Parents want bold changes in schools, to make public education more equitable and learner-centered. But they also believe that home, school and extracurriculars play complementary roles in imparting the broad set of skills children need for their future success. This means educators and policymakers must support learning that extends beyond the school day, the school walls, the school staff and the traditional school approaches. Read the full essay .

High-Quality, High-Dosage Tutoring Can Reduce Learning Loss. A Blueprint for How Washington, States & Districts Can Make It Happen

Personalized Learning: There is near-unanimous, bipartisan agreement that tutoring is among the most promising, evidence-based strategies to help students struggling with learning loss . Decades of rigorous evaluations have consistently found that tutoring programs yield large, positive effects on math and reading achievement, and can even lead to greater social and motivational outcomes. It isn’t just the research community buzzing about tutoring — it is gaining momentum in policy circles, too. Which means there is a real opportunity — and responsibility — to design and deliver tutoring programs in a way that aligns with the research evidence, which is fortunately beginning to tell us more than just “tutoring works.” Contributors Sara Kerr and Kate Tromble of Results for America lay out a blueprint for how Washington, states and local school districts can make high-quality, high-dosage tutoring happen .

COVID-19 Raised Fears of Teacher Shortages. But the Situation Varies from State to State, School to School & Subject to Subject

Teacher Pipeline: Is the U.S. facing a major teacher shortage? Relatively low pay, a booming private sector and adverse working conditions in schools are all important elements in whether teaching is becoming an undesirable profession. But, writes contributor Dan Goldhaber, the factors that lead to attrition are diverse, so treating teachers as a monolith doesn’t help in crafting solutions to the real staffing challenges that some schools face. There is no national teacher labor market per se, because each state adopts its own rules for pay, licensure, tenure, pension and training requirements. And nationally, tens of thousands more people are prepared to teach than there are available positions. But while some schools have applicants lined up when an opening becomes available, others, typically those serving economically disadvantaged students, draw far fewer candidates. And schools tend to struggle to find teachers with special education or STEM training. The pandemic certainly raises concerns about teacher shortages; what is needed is a more nuanced conversation about teacher staffing to come up with more effective solutions to real problems. Read the full essay .

Clash of Cultures, Clash of Privilege — What Happened When 30 Low-Income Students of Color Were Admitted to Elite Prep Schools

Analysis: Programs like Prep for Prep and A Better Chance have long been regarded as groundbreaking solutions to the lack of diversity in the nation’s most elite prep schools. Teens who join these types of programs undergo a transfer of privilege that starts with their education and bleeds into every facet of their lives, forever altering their trajectory with opportunities that otherwise would likely be unattainable. But what assumptions do these programs subscribe to? And what lessons can be found in the experiences of the participants? In her Harvard senior thesis, contributor Jessica Herrera Chaidez followed 30 participants in a program that grants select socioeconomically disadvantaged students of color in the Los Angeles area the opportunity to attend famed independent schools. She found that the experiences of these students can be understood in various forms of twoness associated with this transfer of privilege, an internal struggle that begins with their introduction to the world of elite education and will come to mark them for their entire lives in a way that they aren’t even able to comprehend yet. Read more about her findings, and what some of these students had to say .

Steiner & Wilson: Some Tough Questions, and Some Answers, About Fighting COVID Slide While Accelerating Student Learning

Case Study: How prepared are district leaders, principals and teachers as they work to increase learning readiness for on-grade work this fall? That’s the question posed by contributors David Steiner and Barbara Wilson in a case study examining how a large urban district sought to adapt materials it was already using to implement an acceleration strategy for early elementary foundational skills in reading . Among the insights to be drawn: First, planning is critical. Leaders need to set out precisely how many minutes of instruction will be provided, the exact learning goals and the specific materials; identify all those involved (tutors, specialists, and teachers); and give them access to shared professional development on the chosen acceleration strategies. Second, this requires a sea change from business as usual, where teachers attempt to impart skill-based standards using an eclectic rather than a coherent curriculum. It is not possible to accelerate children with fragmented content. All efforts to prepare students for grade-level instruction must rest on fierce agreement about the shared curriculum to be taught in classrooms. What we teach is the anchor that holds everything else in place. Read the full essay .

Schools Are Facing a Surge of Failing Grades During the Pandemic — and Traditional Approaches Like Credit Recovery Will Not Be Enough to Manage It

Student Supports: Earlier this year, failing grades were on the rise across the country — especially for students who are learning online — and the trend threatened to exacerbate existing educational inequities. The rise in failing grades appears to be most pronounced among students from low-income households, multilingual students and students learning virtually . This could have lasting consequences: Students with failing grades tend to have less access to advanced courses in high school, and a failing grade in even one ninth-grade course can lower a student’s chances of graduating on time. Addressing the problem, though, won’t be easy. In many school systems, the rash of failed courses could overwhelm traditional approaches to helping students make up coursework they may have missed. In a new analysis, Betheny Gross, associate director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, implored school and district leaders to be especially wary of one long-established but questionable practice: credit recovery. Read more about her warning — as well as her recommendations for how districts should seek to reverse this learning loss .

Riccards: The 1776 Report Is a Political Document, Not a Curriculum. But It Has Something to Teach Us

Analysis: The 1776 Report was never intended to stand as curriculum, nor was it designed to be translated into a curriculum as the 1619 Project was. It is a political document offered by political voices. But, writes contributor Patrick Riccards, dismissing it would be a mistake, because it provides an important lesson . The American record, whether it be measured starting in 1619 or 1776, is hopeful and ugly, inspiring and debilitating, a shining beacon and an unshakable dark cloud. American history is messy and contradictory; how we teach it, even more so. For years, we have heard how important it is to increase investment in civics education. But from #BlackLivesMatter to 2020 electioneering to even the assault on the U.S. Capitol, the basics of civics have been on display in our streets and corridors of power. What we lack is the collective historical knowledge necessary to translate civic education into meaningful, positive community change. The 1776 Report identifies beliefs espoused by our Founding Fathers and many Confederates and reflected by those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. They are a part of our history that we must study, understand, contextualize and deconstruct. The 1776 Report becomes the proper close to the social studies lessons of the past four years. As the next chapter of American history is written, it is imperative to apply those lessons to significantly improve the teaching and learning of American history. Our nation’s future depends on better understanding our past .

There’s Lots of Education Data Out There — and It Can Be Misleading. Here Are 6 Questions to Ask

Student Data: Data is critical to addressing inequities in education. However, it is often misused, interpreted to fit a particular agenda or misread in ways that perpetuate an inaccurate story . Data that’s not broken down properly can hide gaps between different groups of students. Facts out of context can lead to superficial conclusions or deceptive narratives. In this essay, contributor Krista Kaput presents six questions that she asks herself when consuming data — and that you should, too .

Educators’ View: Principals Know Best What Their Schools Need. They Should Have a Central Role in Deciding How Relief Funds Are Spent

School Funding: The American Rescue Plan represents a once-in-a-generation federal commitment to K-12 schools across the country. The impact will be felt immediately: The $122 billion in direct funding will support safe school reopenings, help ensure that schools already providing in-person instruction can safely stay open and aid students in recovering from academic and mental health challenges induced and exacerbated by the pandemic. How these funds are distributed will shape the educational prospects of millions of students, affecting the country for decades to come. As they make rescue plan funding decisions, write contributors L. Earl Franks of the National Association of Elementary School Principals and Ronn Nozoe of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, states and districts should meaningfully engage and empower school principals throughout all phases of implementation. Principals, as leaders of their school buildings and staff, have unequaled insights into their individual schools’ needs and know which resources are required most urgently. Read the authors’ four recommendations for leveraging this expertise .

Case Studies: How 11 States Are Using Emergency Federal Funds to Make Improvements in College and Career Access That Will Endure Beyond the Pandemic

COVID Relief: The Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund gave states more than $4 billion in discretionary federal dollars to support K-12 schools, higher education and workforce initiatives. These were welcome resources, coming just as the pandemic accelerated unemployment and exacerbated declining college enrollment, hitting those from low-income backgrounds hardest. But as contributors Betheny Gross, Georgia Heyward and Matt Robinson note, most states have invested overwhelmingly in one-time college scholarships or short-term supports that will end once funds run out. In hopes of encouraging policymakers across the country to make more sustainable investments with the remaining relief funds, the trio spotlights efforts in 11 states that show promise in enduring beyond COVID-19. Read our full case study . 

In Thousands of Districts, 4-Day School Weeks Are Robbing Students of Learning Time for What Amounts to Hygiene Theater

School Safety: Last April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made clear that having good ventilation and wearing masks consistently are far more effective at preventing the spread of COVID-19 than disinfecting surfaces. This clarification was long overdue, say contributors Robin Lake and Georgia Heyward of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, as scientists had long suspected that deep cleaning and temperature checks are more hygiene theater than a strategy for limiting the spread of an airborne virus. Thousands of school districts, however, had already built complex fall reopening plans with a full day for at-home learning. The result was a modified four-day week with students receiving significantly reduced live instruction. Eliminating a full day of in-person teaching was always a high-cost strategy from an education standpoint; now there is confirmation that it was totally unnecessary. Lake and Heyward argue that we cannot afford to throw away an entire day of learning and student support based on a false scientific premise .

Teacher’s View: How the Science of Reading Helped Me Make the Most of Limited Time With My Students & Adapt Lessons to Meet Their Needs

First Person: March 12, 2020, was contributor Jessica Pasik’s last typical day in the classroom before COVID-19 changed everything. When her district closed, she assumed, as did many, that it was a temporary precaution. But with each passing week, she worried that the growth in reading she and her first-graders had worked so hard for would fade away . Many pre-pandemic instructional approaches to teaching reading were already failing students and teachers, and the stress of COVID-19 has only exacerbated these challenges. When Pasik’s district reopened for in-person classes in the fall, they were faced with difficult decisions about how to best deliver instruction. One factor that helped streamline this transition was a grounding in the science of reading. Having extensive knowledge of what they needed to teach allowed educators to focus on how they would teach, make the most of the limited instructional time they had with students and adapt lessons to meet their needs. There are multiple factors that teachers cannot control; one person alone cannot make the systematic changes needed for all children to reach proficiency in literacy. But one knowledgeable teacher can forever change the trajectory of a student’s life. Students will face many challenges once they leave the classroom, but low literacy does not need to be one of them. Read her full essay .

Homeschooling Is on the Rise. What Should That Teach Education Leaders About Families’ Preferences?

Disenrollment: With school closures, student quarantines and tensions over mask requirements, vaccine mandates and culture war issues, families’ lives have been upended in ways few could have imagined 18 months ago. That schools have struggled to adapt is understandable, writes contributor Alex Spurrier. But for millions of families, their willingness to tolerate institutional sclerosis in their children’s education is wearing thin. Over the past 18 months, the rate of families moving their children to a new school increased by about 50 percent , and some 1.2 million switched to homeschooling last academic year. Instead of working to get schools back to a pre-pandemic normal, Spurrier says, education leaders should look at addressing the needs of underserved kids and families — and the best way to understand where schools are falling short is to look at how families are voting with their feet. If options like homeschooling, pods and microschools retain some of their pandemic enrollment gains, it could have ripple effects on funding that resonate throughout the K-12 landscape. Read the full essay .

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Different Ways to Think About COVID, Schools & Repairing Students’ Lost Learning

By Bev Weintraub

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What the best education systems are doing right

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In South Korea and Finland, it’s not about finding the “right” school.

Fifty years ago, both South Korea and Finland had terrible education systems. Finland was at risk of becoming the economic stepchild of Europe. South Korea was ravaged by civil war. Yet over the past half century, both South Korea and Finland have turned their schools around — and now both countries are hailed internationally for their extremely high educational outcomes. What can other countries learn from these two successful, but diametrically opposed, educational models? Here’s an overview of what South Korea and Finland are doing right.

The Korean model: Grit and hard, hard, hard work.

For millennia, in some parts of Asia, the only way to climb the socioeconomic ladder and find secure work was to take an examination — in which the proctor was a proxy for the emperor , says Marc Tucker, president and CEO of the National Center on Education and the Economy. Those examinations required a thorough command of knowledge, and taking them was a grueling rite of passage. Today, many in the Confucian countries still respect the kind of educational achievement that is promoted by an exam culture.

The Koreans have achieved a remarkable feat: the country is 100 percent literate. But success comes with a price.

Among these countries, South Korea stands apart as the most extreme, and arguably, most successful. The Koreans have achieved a remarkable feat: the country is 100 percent literate, and at the forefront of international comparative tests of achievement, including tests of critical thinking and analysis. But this success comes with a price: Students are under enormous, unrelenting pressure to perform. Talent is not a consideration — because the culture believes in hard work and diligence above all, there is no excuse for failure. Children study year-round, both in-school and with tutors. If you study hard enough, you can be smart enough.

“Koreans basically believe that I have to get through this really tough period to have a great future,” says Andreas Schleicher , director of education and skills at PISA and special advisor on education policy at the OECD. “It’s a question of short-term unhappiness and long-term happiness.” It’s not just the parents pressuring their kids. Because this culture traditionally celebrates conformity and order, pressure from other students can also heighten performance expectations. This community attitude expresses itself even in early-childhood education, says Joe Tobin, professor of early childhood education at the University of Georgia who specializes in comparative international research. In Korea, as in other Asian countries, class sizes are very large — which would be extremely undesirable for, say, an American parent. But in Korea, the goal is for the teacher to lead the class as a community, and for peer relationships to develop. In American preschools, the focus for teachers is on developing individual relationships with students, and intervening regularly in peer relationships.

“I think it is clear there are better and worse way to educate our children,” says Amanda Ripley, author of The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way . “At the same time, if I had to choose between an average US education and an average Korean education for my own kid, I would choose, very reluctantly, the Korean model. The reality is, in the modern world the kid is going to have to know how to learn, how to work hard and how to persist after failure. The Korean model teaches that.”

The Finnish model: Extracurricular choice, intrinsic motivation.

In Finland, on the other hand, students are learning the benefits of both rigor and flexibility. The Finnish model, say educators, is utopia.

Finland has a short school day rich with school-sponsored extracurriculars, because Finns believe important learning happens outside the classroom.

In Finland, school is the center of the community, notes Schleicher. School provides not just educational services, but social services. Education is about creating identity.

Finnish culture values intrinsic motivation and the pursuit of personal interest. It has a relatively short school day rich with school-sponsored extracurriculars, because culturally, Finns believe important learning happens outside of the classroom. (An exception? Sports, which are not sponsored by schools, but by towns.) A third of the classes that students take in high school are electives, and they can even choose which matriculation exams they are going to take. It’s a low-stress culture, and it values a wide variety of learning experiences.

But that does not except it from academic rigor, motivated by the country’s history trapped between European superpowers, says Pasi Sahlberg, Finnish educator and author of Finnish Lessons: What the World Can Learn From Educational Change in Finland .

Teachers in Finland teach 600 hours a year, spending the rest of time in professional development. In the U.S., teachers are in the classroom 1,100 hours a year, with little time for feedback.

“A key to that is education. Finns do not really exist outside of Finland,” says Sahlberg. “This drives people to take education more seriously. For example, nobody speaks this funny language that we do. Finland is bilingual, and every student learns both Finnish and Swedish. And every Finn who wants to be successful has to master at least one other language, often English, but she also typically learns German, French, Russian and many others. Even the smallest children understand that nobody else speaks Finnish, and if they want to do anything else in life, they need to learn languages.”

Finns share one thing with South Koreans: a deep respect for teachers and their academic accomplishments. In Finland, only one in ten applicants to teaching programs is admitted. After a mass closure of 80 percent of teacher colleges in the 1970s, only the best university training programs remained, elevating the status of educators in the country. Teachers in Finland teach 600 hours a year, spending the rest of time in professional development, meeting with colleagues, students and families. In the U.S., teachers are in the classroom 1,100 hours a year, with little time for collaboration, feedback or professional development.

How Americans can change education culture

As TED speaker Sir Ken Robinson noted in his 2013 talk ( How to escape education’s death valley ), when it comes to current American education woes “the dropout crisis is just the tip of an iceberg. What it doesn’t count are all the kids who are in school but being disengaged from it, who don’t enjoy it, who don’t get any real benefit from it.” But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Notes Amanda Ripley, “culture is a thing that changes. It’s more malleable than we think. Culture is like this ether that has all kinds of things swirling around in it, some of which are activated and some of which are latent. Given an economic imperative or change in leadership or accident of history, those things get activated.” The good news is, “We Americans have a lot of things in our culture which would support a very strong education system, such as a longstanding rhetoric about the equality of opportunity and a strong and legitimate meritocracy,” says Ripley.

One reason we haven’t made much progress academically over the past 50 years is because it hasn’t been economically crucial for American kids to master sophisticated problem-solving and critical-thinking skills in order to survive. But that’s not true anymore. “There’s a lag for cultures to catch up with economic realities, and right now we’re living in that lag,” says Ripley. “So our kids aren’t growing up with the kind of skills or grit to make it in the global economy.”

“We are prisoners of the pictures and experiences of education that we had,” says Tony Wagner , expert-in-residence at Harvard’s educational innovation center and author of The Global Achievement Gap . “We want schools for our kids that mirror our own experience, or what we thought we wanted. That severely limits our ability to think creatively of a different kind of education. But there’s no way that tweaking that assembly line will meet the 21st-century world. We need a major overhaul.”

Indeed. Today, the American culture of choice puts the onus on parents to find the “right” schools for our kids, rather than trusting that all schools are capable of preparing our children for adulthood. Our obsession with talent puts the onus on students to be “smart,” rather than on adults’ ability to teach them. And our antiquated system for funding schools makes property values the arbiter of spending per student, not actual values.

But what will American education culture look like tomorrow? In the most successful education cultures in the world, it is the system that is responsible for the success of the student, says Schleicher — not solely the parent, not solely the student, not solely the teacher. The culture creates the system. The hope is that Americans can find the grit and will to change their own culture — one parent, student and teacher at a time.

Featured image via iStock.

About the author

Amy S. Choi is a freelance journalist, writer and editor based in Brooklyn, N.Y. She is the co-founder and editorial director of The Mash-Up Americans, a media and consulting company that examines multidimensional modern life in the U.S.

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Listen to the essay, as read by Antero Garcia, associate professor in the Graduate School of Education.

As a professor of education and a former public school teacher, I’ve seen digital tools change lives in schools.

I’ve documented the ways mobile technology like phones can transform student engagement in my own classroom.

I’ve explored how digital tools might network powerful civic learning and dialogue for classrooms across the country – elements of education that are crucial for sustaining our democracy today.

And, like everyone, I’ve witnessed digital technologies make schooling safer in the midst of a global pandemic. Zoom and Google Classroom, for instance, allowed many students to attend classrooms virtually during a period when it was not feasible to meet in person.

So I want to tell you that I think technologies are changing education for the better and that we need to invest more in them – but I just can’t.

Given the substantial amount of scholarly time I’ve invested in documenting the life-changing possibilities of digital technologies, it gives me no pleasure to suggest that these tools might be slowly poisoning us. Despite their purported and transformational value, I’ve been wondering if our investment in educational technology might in fact be making our schools worse.

Let me explain.

When I was a classroom teacher, I loved relying on the latest tools to create impressive and immersive experiences for my students. We would utilize technology to create class films, produce social media profiles for the Janie Crawfords, the Holden Caulfields, and other literary characters we studied, and find playful ways to digitally share our understanding of the ideas we studied in our classrooms.

As a teacher, technology was a way to build on students’ interests in pop culture and the world around them. This was exciting to me.

But I’ve continued to understand that the aspects of technology I loved weren’t actually about technology at all – they were about creating authentic learning experiences with young people. At the heart of these digital explorations were my relationships with students and the trust we built together.

“Part of why I’ve grown so skeptical about this current digital revolution is because of how these tools reshape students’ bodies and their relation to the world around them.”

I do see promise in the suite of digital tools that are available in classrooms today. But my research focus on platforms – digital spaces like Amazon, Netflix, and Google that reshape how users interact in online environments – suggests that when we focus on the trees of individual tools, we ignore the larger forest of social and cognitive challenges.

Most people encounter platforms every day in their online social lives. From the few online retail stores where we buy groceries to the small handful of sites that stream our favorite shows and media content, platforms have narrowed how we use the internet today to a small collection of Silicon Valley behemoths. Our social media activities, too, are limited to one or two sites where we check on the updates, photos, and looped videos of friends and loved ones.

These platforms restrict our online and offline lives to a relatively small number of companies and spaces – we communicate with a finite set of tools and consume a set of media that is often algorithmically suggested. This centralization of internet – a trend decades in the making – makes me very uneasy.

From willfully hiding the negative effects of social media use for vulnerable populations to creating tools that reinforce racial bias, today’s platforms are causing harm and sowing disinformation for young people and adults alike. The deluge of difficult ethical and pedagogical questions around these tools are not being broached in any meaningful way in schools – even adults aren’t sure how to manage their online lives.

You might ask, “What does this have to do with education?” Platforms are also a large part of how modern schools operate. From classroom management software to attendance tracking to the online tools that allowed students to meet safely during the pandemic, platforms guide nearly every student interaction in schools today. But districts are utilizing these tools without considering the wider spectrum of changes that they have incurred alongside them.

Antero Garcia, associate professor of education (Image credit: Courtesy Antero Garcia)

For example, it might seem helpful for a school to use a management tool like Classroom Dojo (a digital platform that can offer parents ways to interact with and receive updates from their family’s teacher) or software that tracks student reading and development like Accelerated Reader for day-to-day needs. However, these tools limit what assessment looks like and penalize students based on flawed interpretations of learning.

Another problem with platforms is that they, by necessity, amass large swaths of data. Myriad forms of educational technology exist – from virtual reality headsets to e-readers to the small sensors on student ID cards that can track when students enter schools. And all of this student data is being funneled out of schools and into the virtual black boxes of company databases.

Part of why I’ve grown so skeptical about this current digital revolution is because of how these tools reshape students’ bodies and their relation to the world around them. Young people are not viewed as complete human beings but as boxes checked for attendance, for meeting academic progress metrics, or for confirming their location within a school building. Nearly every action that students perform in schools – whether it’s logging onto devices, accessing buildings, or sharing content through their private online lives – is noticed and recorded. Children in schools have become disembodied from their minds and their hearts. Thus, one of the greatest and implicit lessons that kids learn in schools today is that they must sacrifice their privacy in order to participate in conventional, civic society.

The pandemic has only made the situation worse. At its beginnings, some schools relied on software to track students’ eye movements, ostensibly ensuring that kids were paying attention to the tasks at hand. Similarly, many schools required students to keep their cameras on during class time for similar purposes. These might be seen as in the best interests of students and their academic growth, but such practices are part of a larger (and usually more invisible) process of normalizing surveillance in the lives of youth today.

I am not suggesting that we completely reject all of the tools at our disposal – but I am urging for more caution. Even the seemingly benign resources we might use in our classrooms today come with tradeoffs. Every Wi-Fi-connected, “smart” device utilized in schools is an investment in time, money, and expertise in technology over teachers and the teaching profession.

Our focus on fixing or saving schools via digital tools assumes that the benefits and convenience that these invisible platforms offer are worth it.

But my ongoing exploration of how platforms reduce students to quantifiable data suggests that we are removing the innovation and imagination of students and teachers in the process.

Antero Garcia is associate professor of education in the Graduate School of Education .

In Their Own Words is a collaboration between the Stanford Public Humanities Initiative  and Stanford University Communications.

If you’re a Stanford faculty member (in any discipline or school) who is interested in writing an essay for this series, please reach out to Natalie Jabbar at [email protected] .

The 10 Education Issues Everybody Should Be Talking About

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What issues have the potential to define—or re define—education in the year ahead? Is there a next “big thing” that could shift the K-12 experience or conversation?

These were the questions Education Week set out to answer in this second annual “10 Big Ideas in Education” report.

You can read about last year’s ideas here . In 2019, though, things are different.

This year, we asked Education Week reporters to read the tea leaves and analyze what was happening in classrooms, school districts, and legislatures across the country. What insights could reporters offer practitioners for the year ahead?

Some of the ideas here are speculative. Some are warning shots, others more optimistic. But all 10 of them here have one thing in common: They share a sense of urgency.

Accompanied by compelling illustrations and outside perspectives from leading researchers, advocates, and practitioners, this year’s Big Ideas might make you uncomfortable, or seem improbable. The goal was to provoke and empower you as you consider them.

Let us know what you think, and what big ideas matter to your classroom, school, or district. Tweet your comments with #K12BigIdeas .

No. 1: Kids are right. School is boring.

Out-of-school learning is often more meaningful than anything that happens in a classroom, writes Kevin Bushweller, the Executive Editor of EdWeek Market Brief. His essay tackling the relevance gap is accompanied by a Q&A with advice on nurturing, rather than stifling students’ natural curiosity. Read more.

No. 2: Teachers have trust issues. And it’s no wonder why.

Many teachers may have lost faith in the system, says Andrew Ujifusa, but they haven’t lost hope. The Assistant Editor unpacks this year’s outbreak of teacher activism. And read an account from a disaffected educator on how he built a coalition of his own. Read more.

No. 3: Special education is broken.

Forty years since students with disabilities were legally guaranteed a public school education, many still don’t receive the education they deserve, writes Associate Editor Christina A. Samuels. Delve into her argument and hear from a disability civil rights pioneer on how to create an equitable path for students. Read more.

No. 4: Schools are embracing bilingualism, but only for some students.

Staff Writer Corey Mitchell explains the inclusion problem at the heart of bilingual education. His essay includes a perspective from a researcher on dismantling elite bilingualism. Read more.

No. 5: A world without annual testing may be closer than you think.

There’s agreement that we have a dysfunctional standardized-testing system in the United States, Associate Editor Stephen Sawchuk writes. But killing it would come with some serious tradeoffs. Sawchuk’s musing on the alternatives to annual tests is accompanied by an argument for more rigorous classroom assignments by a teacher-practice expert. Read more.

No. 6: There are lessons to be learned from the educational experiences of black students in military families.

Drawing on his personal experience growing up in an Air Force family, Staff Writer Daarel Burnette II highlights emerging research on military-connected students. Learn more about his findings and hear from two researchers on what a new ESSA mandate means for these students. Read more.

No. 7: School segregation is not an intractable American problem.

Racial and economic segregation remains deeply entrenched in American schools. Staff Writer Denisa R. Superville considers the six steps one district is taking to change that. Her analysis is accompanied by an essay from the president of the American Educational Research Association on what is perpetuating education inequality. Read more.

No. 8: Consent doesn’t just belong in sex ed. class. It needs to start a lot earlier.

Assistant Editor Sarah D. Sparks looked at the research on teaching consent and found schools and families do way too little, way too late. Her report is partnered with a researcher’s practical guide to developmentally appropriate consent education. Read more.

No. 9: Education has an innovation problem.

Are education leaders spending too much time chasing the latest tech trends to maintain what they have? Staff Writer Benjamin Herold explores the innovation trap. Two technologists offer three tips for putting maintenance front and center in school management. Read more.

No. 10: There are two powerful forces changing college admissions.

Some colleges are rewriting the admissions script for potential students. Senior Contributing Writer Catherine Gewertz surveys this changing college admissions landscape. Her insights are accompanied by one teacher’s advice for navigating underserved students through the college application process. Read more.

Wait, there’s more.

Want to know what educators really think about innovation? A new Education Week Research Center survey delves into what’s behind the common buzzword for teachers, principals, and district leaders. Take a look at the survey results.

A version of this article appeared in the January 09, 2019 edition of Education Week as What’s on the Horizon for 2019?

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8 ways we can improve schools today for a better future tomorrow.

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Can we change the trajectory of school?

Right now, most school districts are trying to develop an effective plan for their returning students in the fall. Preparing for the unknown in school is no easy feat to undertake.

As a mom and teacher quietly watching from the sidelines, education has been an essential part of my life.

Education has an impact on everything we see, do, and believe in our world. From the basics of reading and writing to entrepreneurship and the economy, school is more than a home for academics.

Schools Today

In traditional schools (when we're not in a pandemic), students typically attend a regular school day according to age, grade-level, test score outcomes, and unique learning needs. Academically, a typical pattern of learning content, memorizing it, and taking standardized tests, for the most part, is still the way we run schools today.

Following this traditional way of teaching is no fault of educators. Many factors impact a child's education, from state and federal requirements to school boards and funding. Educators unfortunately, do not have a significant voice at this table.

We also have four generations of educators in the classroom today—those who grew up without a computer, and those who held the world in their pocket. The differences in each generation is so great, it can be difficult to get everyone on board with massive changes. Taking small steps in changing curriculum outcomes is always a good start.

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Best 5% interest savings accounts of 2024, making small changes can lead to large results.

In effective schools, especially at the high school level, students have the opportunity to build long lasting relationships among their peers and educators. They learn and grow together. They can discover their passions, and take classes that suit their interests. They have a chance to grow, boost their talents, focus on career choices, shadow industries, have access to career guides and mentors, problem-solve, learn to question, debate, and discuss critical topics. They also learn how to work together and independently—while developing essential social and emotional skills.

Finally, an effective school sees each student as a whole child, and emphasizes positive developmental growth without the worry of constant grades and testing.

All of these experiences listed above help young adults become engaged and active citizens, and contributes to the world in meaningful ways. 

Learning is a life-long journey that should never end.

The Economy

Education has a tremendous impact on the economy. According to  Investopedia , "A country's economy becomes more productive as the proportion of educated workers increases since educated   workers can more efficiently carry out tasks that require literacy and critical thinking. 

In this sense, education is an investment in human capital, similar to an investment in better equipment."

However, we must ask, “What type of education do our students need today for a strong economic future?”

Education In 2020

It is now the second half of 2020, and although we don't have to change everything about education, we have a unique opportunity to look outside of the traditional school walls, and bring in some new ideas that can change the future for the better.

Mental Health First

If we took this time right now, here are a few suggestions on how we could potentially make school a better fit for the times ahead.

Social and Emotional —Before anything, we must put Maslow's Theory in practice before Bloom's Taxonomy when students come back to school.

Institutions should provide social and emotional support immediately to ensure all teachers, staff, and school administrators are getting the help they need during such a stressful time—and this support should always continue regardless of the situation.

Before the pandemic, depression and suicide rates were already exploding. When students return, they are going to need more emotional and social support than ever. Nobody will know what our kids went through during this time of absence. Schools must acknowledge, understand, and support students to their best potential. 

Maslow's pyramid of needs.

Planning for the Future in Education: How We Can Improve Academic and Better Career Outcomes Now

Create Work and Business Relationships— Create high school and local business partnerships programs. Include input from high school juniors and seniors and have them assist in the design of a program. Listen to their voices and passions. Provide students with opportunities to shadow different industries, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs. Put students in the driver's seat and work with them as a listener, learner, and guide. Mentor students and show them how to become mentors to underclassmen. 

Exemplify Entrepreneurship —We are facing unusual days ahead, and the future is unknown. Teach kids how to think for themselves and show them it’s alright to ask questions. Innovate with them, and help them to change the world through their ideas. Most students don't believe in themselves because society has been telling them what to do, how to behave, and what’s right or wrong. Without the ability to think and question for themselves, students cannot live up to their full potential. Engage them in their creative side, and show them it’s okay to fail, get up, and build again. They may look at you oddly at first, but the future wins can be immeasurable.

Encourage Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving Skills— Teachers can create lessons that encourage critical thinking and problem-solving skills with almost any given content area or topic. Challenge students to rise above the bar because you know they can do it. 

Understand Students' Personalities— Introvert, ambivert, and extroverted personalities all have distinctive characteristics, and different areas of comfort when it comes to attending school.

When I went through all of my years of teacher training, I didn’t learn about students' personalities until my last class during my M.Ed. I didn’t realize how every educator had a significant impact on a student's learning experience when they didn’t understand the differences among personalities. Teachers must know their students' characteristics, unique learning needs, and plan accordingly to fit their learning styles best.

Focus on Careers —For older students, teach them how to focus on careers with their hearts and their heads. This type of teaching means helping students make smart decisions when it comes to college, careers, and future planning. Passion is critical, but we want our students to land a job in a field where we expect growth to occur.

The College Narrative— Our society has changed rapidly, but the college narrative has stayed the same for many years. It is important to let students know they have many choices. College is not the best fit for everyone and is not the only path—and that’s okay. Also, going to college today does not guarantee a great job right after graduation. Learning is a never-ending journey that doesn’t stop. College can be critical especially for certain trained skills and potential future earnings, but it is not the single journey to success today. 

The college story should match the world we live in today—one filled with options, different ways to learn, and work-study programs that can benefit students and leave them without debt. Our students need to start above the ground—they should not come out of college at such a young age with piles of debt, stress, and worry.

Learn with Students —When you learn with your students, you can connect with them. You are showing vulnerability, and that can help raise a child's self-esteem. Grow with your students, listen to their world—hear their stories.

What else would you add to this list?

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How the origins of the school system aimed to produce independent, critical thinkers

At the heart of wilhelm von humboldt's philosophy of education was bildung — reaching one's potential.

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• LISTEN | Pt 2: The origins of the school system — and what's missing now  

About 200 years ago, an obscure Prussian philosopher named Wilhelm von Humboldt created the world's first education system. He was also behind the modern research university. 

These breakthroughs in education have been adopted around the world.  Yet very few people have even heard of Humboldt, let alone his extraordinary accomplishments.  

Who was Humboldt?

In 1806, the Prussian forces of King Friedrich Wilhelm III started a war with Napoleon, Emperor of France.

Thousands died in the twin battles of Jena and Auerstedt. Napoleon won, meaning a large area of Prussia came under the control of the French.

At the time, Wilhelm von Humboldt was a mid-level aristocrat and Prussian Ambassador to the Vatican in Rome.  With his country defeated and in shatters, Humboldt was called back to Berlin, and demoted to a lowly position within the Ministry of the Interior.

Humboldt had the job for only a year and a half, but during that time, succeeded in creating the public education system — from primary school through to university. 

"Within a very short period of time… he just radically reformed the whole system," said Philipp von Turk. Former director at JP Morgan Chase in New York, he returned to university and researched the remarkable Humboldt. 

"It was really under Humboldt that the notion of universal mandatory education was implemented."

Theory of Bildung

The core of Humboldt's thinking on education is 'Bildung,' a word that first appeared around the late 13th century, when the Bible was translated from Latin into German. It comes from the idea that a person carries in their soul the image of God, and use it to build those ideals within themselves. 

Bildung's meaning was static for the next 500 years, but by the late 18th century, German poets and philosophers began to reshape it. Humboldt joined the debate. For him, Bildung was non-secular. He saw it as the ability to see and manifest one's own, individual potential.

In an essay called Theory of Bildung in 1793, he writes: "What do we demand of a nation?  Of an Age?  Of entire mankind, if it is to occasion respect and admiration? We demand that Bildung, wisdom, and virtue, as powerfully and universally propagated as possible…that it augment its inner worth to such an extent that the concept of humanity, if taken from its example alone, would be of a rich and worthy substance."

It's a very powerful concept, says Philipp von Turk, who points to philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau as a seminal influence on Humboldt's concept of Bildung.

"One way to look at this in terms of the purpose of education [is] with Rousseau: the world is bad. The purpose of education is to teach a person to develop [their] full capacities — free of all constraints. That might be introduced by commercial interests, by vocations, by the demands of the state," Von Turk explained.

"The focus is on the development of the personality to the fullest extent. And then the person with this education is then in a position to confront [their] time and to make it better."

Von Turk says once you consider the enormous potential human beings have, "you begin to think about how to develop that in a maximalist way, you begin to get to the concept of Bildung."

Building a state

For Humboldt, a better world starts with a society of self-aware, independent thinkers.

"That means that the students are not just memorizing facts and material that they then spit out in an exam at the end to prove that they've learned a lot. But it is about teaching oneself, cultivating oneself in order to learn what it means to do research. So that you have the capability of actually doing your own research and not just memorizing the results of somebody else's research," said Mitchell Ash, professor emeritus of modern history at the University of Vienna in Austria.

"The idea is to develop in yourself the capabilities of critical thinking and comprehension of high-level theory and philosophy, philosophical principles that will enable you to engage whatever you're engaging in at a high intellectual level."

In a letter to the King, Ash says, Humboldt wrote that Bildung would produce better civil servants, "because they weren't just robots carrying out the decrees of a king, but they were able to have the capability of understanding the principles behind the policies and therefore be able to enact them more effectively," said Ash.

"So Bildung is not just something that people do for their own amusement. It's about improving the intellectual capabilities of at least a segment of the population."

Yet over the years, as Humboldt's public education system was adopted, modified and spread around the world, Bildung — the cultivation of our human potential — may well have been the critical piece left out.  

Soon, the state's influence on education took hold, with its own agenda. This is explored in part two of the documentary, Humboldt's Ghost.  

*This episode was presented by Karl Turner and produced by Mary Lynk.

Guests in this episode:

Philipp von Türk  is a former managing director of the legal department at JP Morgan Chase in New York. In his retirement, he returned to graduate school and is a Wilhelm von Humboldt enthusiast.

Mitchell Ash  is a professor emeritus of modern history at the University of Vienna in Austria.

Paul Axelrod is a professor emeritus at York University's Faculty of Education in Toronto. 

Gabor Maté is an acclaimed Canadian author, and physician. He's also a former high school English teacher.  

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Reimagining a more equitable and resilient K–12 education system

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended school systems around the world. The pace has been frenetic as systems have had to stand up remote learning overnight, plan whether and how to reopen schools amid changing epidemiological circumstances, and support students academically and emotionally. The scope of the challenge has thus far left little time for deeper reflection.

Yet crises often create an opportunity for broader change, and as education systems begin to make decisions about investments for the new school year, it’s important to step back and consider the longer-term imperative to create a better system for every child beyond the pandemic.

The process starts with a key question: What are we trying to achieve, for whom, by when, and to what standards? Our research shows that top-performing school systems can vary significantly in curricula, assessments, teacher behaviors, and even desired outcomes. What unites them is a focus on excellence for every child, regardless of race, gender, income level, or location. That core value should inform the areas to keep in our current systems and where to innovate to create more effective and equitable education for all.

While greater use of technology in education may be inevitable, technology will never replace a great teacher. In fact, a single teacher can change a student’s trajectory.

While we mustn’t lose sight of what we have learned through decades of research and education reform, the COVID-19 pandemic is driving educators to accelerate new models of learning and innovate beyond the classroom. Lockdowns forced students around the world to learn from home, resulting in a dramatic increase in the use of online tools, such as videoconferencing, learning-management platforms, and assessment tools. In a month, Google Classroom doubled its number of users and Khan Academy saw a 20-fold increase in parent registrations. At the same time, the pandemic has highlighted and even exacerbated many of the inequities in the school system, from the learning environment at home to access to devices, internet, and high-quality education . There is now both the political will and a sense of urgency to take on the challenge of fixing long-broken delivery models. We applaud that instinct.

In this article, we suggest that school systems recommit to four basic principles and consider eight ideas for innovation (exhibit). Although it may seem overwhelming, the time to start reimagining the future of education is now.

Recommit to what works: Get the basics right

Will the COVID-19 pandemic completely disrupt global K–12 education and usher in a fully virtual, all-inquiry-based, 21st-century-skill, insert-buzzword-here future? No, actually. We know from decades of study that every school system must first get these basic elements right:

• Core skills and instruction . Students need a strong foundation in literacy and numeracy. You can’t code if you can’t do math. You can’t communicate effectively if you can’t read or write. You can’t innovate without knowledge. Yet UNESCO estimates that 60 percent of children around the world aren’t meeting basic standards. 1 “More than one-half of children and adolescents are not learning worldwide,” UNESCO, September 2017, bangkok.unesco.org. Other studies show that US students who can’t read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to drop out of school. 2 Donald J. Hernandez, Double jeopardy: How third-grade reading skills and poverty influence high school graduation , Annie E. Casey Foundation, January 1, 2012, aecf.org. Research has identified the curricula, instructional materials, and teaching methods that are most effective in helping children learn. And the earlier that children get exposed to those skills, in prekindergarten or other programs , the better. Systems need to ensure that the knowledge is being adopted in both remote and in-person environments and evaluate new ideas against those benchmarks.
• High-quality teachers and teaching . Research backs up what many of us know to be true: children learn best from people, not programs. While greater use of technology in education may be inevitable, technology will never replace a great teacher . In fact, a single teacher can change a student’s trajectory. 3 June C. Rivers and William L. Sanders, Cumulative and residual effects of teachers on future student academic achievement , University of Tennessee Value-Added Research and Assessment Center, November 1996. High-performing school systems understand that and invest in both recruiting and helping top talent become effective teachers . Every system must do the same by developing and supporting teachers, especially as they learn new skills for remote and hybrid learning.
• Performance measurement . It’s hard to achieve excellence without data on current performance and benchmarks to aim toward. However, data should be used primarily to inform—to direct support to the students, teachers, and schools that need it most—not to punish. 4 Michael Fullan, Choosing the wrong drivers for whole system reform , Centre for Strategic Education, April 2011. Instead of eradicating tests altogether, systems need better assessments and better tools to help each student succeed. Formative assessment becomes even more critical and must thus be more intentional when the teacher is not teaching in person.
• Performance level and context . School systems at different levels of performance, from poor to fair to good to great to excellent , require different sets of interventions. Poor performers may need central control to build up basic infrastructure and provide motivation, scaffolding, and scripted lesson plans for teachers. Stronger performers may need more decentralized innovation, peer-led learning, and collaborative planning to engage students and staff. In the context of remote-learning design, that might mean mass TV and radio programs in some countries to reach all students; in others, it may involve ensuring better connectivity and access to devices to close the digital divide .

Those are basic table stakes, but they aren’t enough. Progress in educational outcomes seems to have stalled in recent years. Beyond the basics, the COVID-19 crisis is a signal that school systems around the world need to move beyond existing approaches to embrace more radical innovation, rethinking some fundamental elements of how we have educated students for generations.

Harness technology to scale access

Research demonstrates that just handing out devices to students doesn’t lead to improved learning . The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that giving lectures on a video call is rarely a substitute for face-to-face learning. The challenge isn’t just to adopt new technologies but also to incorporate them in ways that improve access and quality.

That’s especially important in the areas of the world that struggle with limited resources and significant shortages of qualified teachers. 5 UNESCO UIS, UNESCO Institute of Statistics, July 2020, uis.unesco.org. Imagine Worldwide has worked with partners to develop high-quality, tech-enabled literacy and numeracy programs that cost less than $25 per student per year. With supervision from any adult, students use solar-powered tablets preloaded with research-based, self-paced math and literacy software for up to 60 minutes a day. That enables every device to support the learning of four to five students, all without requiring an internet connection. Randomized control trials in Malawi have shown learning gains of 5.3 months among users over a control group in a single school year. 6 Sarah Bardack, Antonie Chigeda, and Karen Levesque, Tablet-based learning for foundational literacy and math: An 8-month RCT in Malawi , Imagine Worldwide, January 31, 2020, imagineworldwide.org. For less than $5 billion—less than 1 percent of the US public-school budget—that technology could be scaled across sub-Saharan Africa.

Move toward mastery-based learning

Personalized, mastery-based learning has been around for more than a decade, but the best solutions still reach a minority of kids. Technology has made the model even more compelling, enabling personalization at a level that’s impossible to achieve in the traditional classroom. Smart adaptive-technology programs 7 For example, ALEKS, Cerego, DreamBox, HegartyMaths, Khan Academy tools, Realizeit, ST Math, Squirrel AI Learning, Up Learn, and others. can integrate instruction, practice, and feedback to allow students to work at their own pace, only moving on when they have fully grasped the material. Those programs have shown particular promise in mathematics. 8 Will technology transform education for the better? , Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, 2019, povertyactionlab.org. They can also make formative assessments more efficient, immediate, and fair, reducing teacher bias while freeing teachers up from the half day that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reports they spend each week on grading student work. 9 “How much time do teachers spend teaching?,” in Education at a Glance 2019 , OECD, September 2019, oecd-ilibrary.org. As school systems invest in software solutions for remote and hybrid learning, they can plan for a future of blended personalized learning in the classroom.

Support children holistically

Previous research has outlined the correlation between mindsets and academic performance, but the shift to remote learning has put it into stark relief. Students with high levels of self-motivation, persistence, and independence have thrived, while others have struggled. Similarly, the emotional toll of the COVID-19 pandemic has raised awareness of the need to address anxiety, depression, and other mental-health issues as a precondition to helping students learn. It’s a reminder that schools need to address the whole child, helping them develop skills and awareness that go beyond what they need simply to find work. Educators play a critical role in helping children learn how to become effective citizens, parents, workers, and custodians of the planet.

A model that has long won accolades is the International Baccalaureate, which was designed to educate international-minded students to be “inquirers, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, principled, open-minded, caring, risk-takers, balanced, and reflective.” 10 “The International Baccalaureate learner profile,” International Baccalaureate Organization, ibo.org. Meanwhile, KIPP Foundation charter schools have developed a character framework featuring the seven character traits most predictive of academic success: zest, grit, optimism, self-control, gratitude, social intelligence, and curiosity. 11 “Focus on character,” KIPP Foundation, kipp.org; Susan Headden and Sarah McKay, “Motivation matters: How new research can help teachers boost student engagement,” Carnegie Foundation, July 2015, carnegiefoundation.org; Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, “Hard thinking on soft skills,” Brookings Institution, March 24, 2016, brookings.edu. KIPP Foundation schools outperform peers in both test scores and college enrollment. For schools that haven’t yet integrated those lessons, the upcoming semester would be a great time to start. Whether teachers are using remote, hybrid, or fully in-person models, starting the school year with relationships and socioemotional check-ins will ensure that students are mentally ready to learn.

Help students adapt to the future of work

The COVID-19 pandemic has likely accelerated workplace automation as employers continue to automate tasks to reduce costs and minimize the spread of infection. School systems need to help students adapt to rapid changes in the workplace  and other impacts of rapid digitization, from ethical standards and cybersecurity to the impact on health, forensics, and many other parts of the economy.

In the digital era, educators need to expand their understanding of what it means to be literate in the 21st century: not replacing traditional learning but complementing it. Computer programming and digital literacy are becoming core skills. For example, England has integrated computer science into all levels of primary and secondary education, so students start learning about coding and internet safety from the age of five. 12 “National curriculum in England: Computing programmes of study,” UK Department for Education, September 11, 2013, gov.uk.

With the speed of change in the digital era, business leaders can also be critical partners in helping students develop job-ready skills. A model of this is P-TECH (Pathways in Technology Early College High School), which launched in New York City in 2011 as a partnership of IBM, the City University of New York, and the New York City Department of Education. During the six-year program, students earn a high-school diploma and an associate’s degree while gaining work experience with industry partners. The model has since expanded to include 220 schools and 600 industry partners in 24 countries. In response to the COVID-19 crisis, IBM announced the launch of Open P-TECH to expand the reach of the program further, enabling students aged 16 and older to register individually for classes in topics such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing.

Invest in new models of teacher preparation and development

Although most education experts recognize the importance of great teachers, teacher preparation and development still falls short in many systems. That has to change, starting with creating more linkages between teacher training and local schools, much like the linkages between medical schools and hospitals to anchor learning in real-world practice. In more advanced systems, there is an opportunity to reimagine teacher training and development more fundamentally by leveraging advanced technology. Corporate learning programs successfully use simulations to train workers before getting in front of a customer or patient. Given how much teachers improve in their first two years, 13 Kevin C. Bastian, C. Kevin Fortner, and Gary T. Henry, “Gains in novice teacher effectiveness: On-the-job development or less effective teachers leaving?,” Education Policy Initiative at Carolina, June 2011, publicpolicy.unc.edu. simulations could provide teachers a valuable learning experience before they spend their first day alone in a real classroom of children. While some early products are emerging in that space, 14 For example, simSchool is a virtual practicum program that immerses novice teachers in some of the complexities of teaching seventh- to 12th-grade students who possess a variety of different learning characteristics and personalities. the power lies in customizing and applying them at scale.

In the digital era, educators need to expand their understanding of what it means to be literate in the 21st century: not replacing traditional learning but complementing it.

Teachers need continued support in the classroom and often struggle to receive effective professional development. 15 For example, in the United States, a TNTP survey of 10,500 teachers found that teachers spent an average of 19 days per year in teacher development but only 30 percent actually improved their performance. The Mirage: Confronting the hard truth about our quest for teacher development , TNTP, August 4, 2015, tntp.org. Here, too, technology has a critical role to play. In less developed systems, simple, robust technologies can provide scaffolding for teachers with little experience. Bridge International Academies is an example of a school system that uses scripted lesson plans on tablets to help teachers cover core areas. In a large-scale trial in Liberia, students who attended Bridge International Academies schools for a three-year period under that system achieved results equivalent to an additional two and a half years of learning. 16 “Three year RCT in Liberia evidences improved learning outcomes,” Bridge, December 16, 2019, bridgeinternationalacademies.com.

Unbundle the role of the teacher

School systems can examine the areas in which teachers spend their time and free them to spend more time on high-value activities that require deep teaching expertise and relationships. The stress of remote and hybrid learning is already catalyzing some systems to rethink teacher roles and allocation. In the short term, such reimagining may involve teams of teachers, with some providing remote and others providing in-person learning. It might also involve new roles, such as learning navigators to help students adapt to remote learning.

Longer term, systems might consider a more radical unbundling of the role of the teacher, enabling individuals to take on more differentiated roles that play to their strengths, preferences, and areas of expertise. For example, the Opportunity Culture multiclassroom-leadership model creates teams that consist of a multiclassroom leader and several teachers, teaching associates, and residents. More students are reached by excellent teachers, expert teachers are provided a career ladder without having to shift into administration, and newer teachers get coaching to improve. When placed into that type of teaching team, teachers who were, on average, at the 50th percentile in student learning achieved learning gains equivalent to the 66th to 85th percentile in student learning. Another model uses expert teachers to coach and support other teachers to improve their craft. 17 Li-Kai Chen, Emma Dorn, and Paul Rutten, “ The leerKRACHT foundation: Continuous improvement in Dutch education ,” February 2020.

Allocate resources equitably to support every student

Many education experts argue that the current methods of allocating funding, teachers, and resources to schools are fundamentally unjust. Globally, there are significant inequities among countries, yet donor funding is insufficient to close the gap to universal enrollment, let alone the gap to universal high-quality education. Achieving Sustainable Development Goal number four—to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all—will require a significant increase in investment for the students most at risk of falling behind.

The stress of remote and hybrid learning is already catalyzing some systems to rethink teacher roles and allocation.

Within countries, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the racial disparities  in public health and the economic impact of the crisis. It has also laid bare the inequities of access to high-quality education . The Black Lives Matter movement in the United States is a reminder of the deep-seated racial inequities that are partially rooted in educational segregation. Those inequities emerge even before school attendance begins.

Instead of helping low-income and disadvantaged students catch up, the current funding mechanisms in many countries widen the gap. In the United States, the average high-poverty school receives $500 less per student each year than the average low-poverty school does. 18 Stephen Q. Cornman et al., Revenues and expenditures for public elementary and secondary school districts: School year 2015–16 (fiscal year 2016) , Institute of Education Sciences, December 2018, nces.ed.gov. It doesn’t have to be this way.

From proposals to redraw district boundaries 19 For examples, see proposals by EdBuild, a not for profit that advocates for fair school funding, on edbuild.org. to innovative collaborations, there are many ways to help create a more equitable education system. In the Brazilian state of Ceará, for example, the top 150 high-performing schools are partnered with low-performing schools. For the top performers to access additional funds, they have to help the low performers achieve certain targets. 20 Strong performers and successful reformers in education: Lessons from PISA for the United States , Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2011, oecd.org. Could systems around the world incentivize top schools to offer all their advanced classes and electives, along with mentors, resources, and other forms of help, to high-poverty neighbors? Could that start with the remote-learning instruction currently being rolled out?

Rethink school structures and policies

Education systems now have an opportunity to rethink the school structures that were forged in the 18th century. It’s increasingly clear that school calendars organized around a long summer break aren’t ideal for learning. For students who struggle with remote learning through the COVID-19 pandemic, a long summer hiatus could be devastating. 21 Kelly Charlton et al., “The effects of summer vacation on achievement test scores: A narrative and meta-analytic review,” Review of Educational Research , 1996, Volume 66, Number 3, pp. 227–68; Megan Kuhfeld, “Summer learning loss: What we know and what we’re learning,” NWEA, July 16, 2018, nwea.org; Megan Kuhfeld, “Summer learning loss: Does it widen the achievement gap?,” NWEA, September 4, 2018, nwea.org. In some countries, existing policies on sorting students too early can preclude opportunities for students sorted into different pathways or tracks. Other systems rely overly on repetition, which can label and demotivate students.

Perhaps the COVID-19 crisis can be a catalyst for innovation. For example, Cleveland schools are considering scrapping grade levels altogether to promote proficiency-based learning. Schools in Australia and India have temporarily shifted their school calendars. As education systems work out how to catch up on the lost learning resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, perhaps summer school in 2021 could be the first step toward a more equitable school calendar going forward.

The list of educational innovations and possible interventions is long, and many of those changes are untested or associated with only emerging evidence. We don’t wish to experiment with our children’s futures. But equally, we don’t want to be held back by inertia or continue with failed experiments. Where should school systems start?

Bold education systems can take an agile and research-based approach, running opt-in pilots in small pockets to test parent appetite and student outcomes. Smart systems will also expand their partnership networks, collaborating with academia to bring the best of learning science, with employers to create linkages to the workplace, and with philanthropists to access funding. All school systems must challenge themselves to reshape their models to deliver a better education to every child.

Jake Bryant is an associate partner in McKinsey’s Washington, DC, office; Emma Dorn is a manager of education capabilities for the global public and social sector in the Silicon Valley office; Stephen Hall is an associate partner in the Dubai office; and Frédéric Panier is a partner in the Brussels office.

The authors wish to thank Katie Owen and Petr Vilim for their dedicated research and contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Diane Brady, a senior editor in the New York office.

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Home — Essay Samples — Philosophy — Philosophy of Education — How Our School System is Flawed

How Our School System is Flawed

• Categories: Philosophy of Education

About this sample

Words: 424 |

Published: Apr 11, 2019

Words: 424 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Works Cited

• Robinson, K. (2006). How schools kill creativity. TED Conferences LLC. https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity/transcript?language=en
• Kim, Y., & Saxberg, B. (2017). Five principles for unlocking the potential of personalized learning. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/social-sector/our-insights/five-principles-for-unlocking-the-potential-of-personalized-learning
• Darling-Hammond, L., & Rothman, R. (2011). Teacher and leader effectiveness in high-performing education systems. Alliance for Excellent Education. https://all4ed.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/TeacherEffectivenessReport.pdf
• The Aspen Institute. (2010). The learning matrix: Connecting education policy to practice. The Aspen Institute.
• Graham, C. R., Borup, J., & Smith, N. B. (2012). Using TPACK as a framework to understand teacher candidates' technology integration decisions. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 28(6), 530-546.
• Hammerness, K., Darling-Hammond, L., Bransford, J., Berliner, D., Cochran-Smith, M., McDonald, M., & Zeichner, K. (2005). How teachers learn and develop. In L. Darling-Hammond & J. Bransford (Eds.), Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. 358-389). Jossey-Bass.
• Sheehy, K. (2018). Creative collaboration: Schools create better outcomes by working together. American School Board Journal, 205(7), 24-27.
• Zhao, Y. (2012). World class learners: Educating creative and entrepreneurial students. Corwin Press.
• Hargreaves, A., & Fullan, M. (2012). Professional capital: Transforming teaching in every school. Teachers College Press.
• Coates, K., & Morrison, D. (2017). The future of skills: Employment in 2030. Pearson.

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Essay on Indian Education System for Students and Children

500+ words essay on indian education system for students and children.

The Indian education system is quite an old education system that still exists. It has produced so many genius minds that are making India proud all over the world. However, while it is one of the oldest systems, it is still not that developed when compared to others, which are in fact newer. This is so as the other countries have gone through growth and advancement, but the Indian education system is still stuck in old age. It faces a lot of problems that need to be sorted to let it reach its full potential.

Problems with Indian Education System

Our Indian education system faces a lot of problems that do not let it prosper and help other children succeed in life . The biggest problem which it has to face is the poor grading system. It judges the intelligence of a student on the basis of academics which is in the form of exam papers. That is very unfair to students who are good in their overall performance but not that good at specific subjects.

Moreover, they only strive to get good marks not paying attention to understanding what is taught. In other words, this encourages getting good marks through mugging up and not actually grasping the concept efficiently.

Furthermore, we see how the Indian education system focuses on theory more. Only a little percentage is given for practical. This makes them run after the bookish knowledge and not actually applying it to the real world. This practice makes them perplexed when they go out in the real world due to lack of practical knowledge.

Most importantly, the Indian education system does not emphasize enough on the importance of sports and arts. Students are always asked to study all the time where they get no time for other activities like sports and arts.

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How Can We Improve Indian Education System?

As the Indian Education System is facing so many problems, we need to come up with effective solutions so it improves and creates a brighter future for students . We can start by focusing on the skill development of the students. The schools and colleges must not only focus on the ranks and grades but on the analytical and creative skills of children.

In addition, subjects must not be merely taught theoretically but with practical. This will help in a better understanding of the subject without them having to mug up the whole thing due to lack of practical knowledge. Also, the syllabus must be updated with the changing times and not follow the old age pattern.

Other than that, the government and private colleges must now increase the payroll of teachers. As they clearly deserve more than what they offer. To save money, the schools hire teachers who are not qualified enough. This creates a very bad classroom environment and learning. They must be hired if they are fit for the job and not because they are working at a lesser salary.

In conclusion, the Indian education system must change for the better. It must give the students equal opportunities to shine better in the future. We need to let go of the old and traditional ways and enhance the teaching standards so our youth can get create a better world.

FAQs on Indian Education System

Q.1 What problems does the Indian Education System face?

A.1 Indian education is very old and outdated. It judges students on the basis of marks and grades ignoring the overall performance of the student. It focuses on academics side-lining arts and sports.

Q.2 How can we improve the Indian education system?

A.2 The colleges and schools must hire well and qualified teachers. They must help students to understand the concept instead of merely mugging up the whole subject.

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