Exploring The Grade Unknown (Edition #0)
Questions of innovation & equity (and lack of it) in education
Houston, we have a problem…
Growing up, I always had a natural curiosity about the world around me — there was a constant voice in the back of my head asking questions about everything I saw and experienced. I’d ask, “Mom, why is the sky blue? Why is it dark at night? Why does it get cold in the winter? Why do birds fly? Dad, why did mom stop answering my questions?” The questions never seemed to end, and eventually I started to ask questions that even my all-knowing parents (or so I thought at the time) didn’t have the answer to.
When I was maybe 12 years old, I finally found a friend that could answer seemingly any question I threw at them. My friend’s name: Google. I learned how planes fly, how the solar system works, when dinosaurs existed, and so much more. The internet revolutionized how I learned and the questions I asked, but I found out that it, too, had its limits. As my questions grew deeper, Google didn’t seem to have quite so many answers. It turns out that it’s hard for a search engine to wrap its head around why my great-grandma passed away or how we fix a broken economic system. I wanted to learn, but I needed guidance from more than a computer algorithm.
It was about this time that I started high school, and I was excited. For a kid who couldn’t stop asking questions, what better place could there be than an academic environment that (supposedly) nurtures students’ curiosity and rewards students for seeking difficult answers. I loved learning, I loved teachers, and I loved the topics covered, but after a month of high school, there was just one problem — I HATED school. I found out very quickly that “school” and “learning” were not synonymous and, in many cases, were opposites. I loved to learn but I hated school — elementary school through college. I hated grades and the unnecessary stress they brought. I hated time-consuming projects that restricted my natural curiosities that motivated me to learn in the first place. I hated being too exhausted to learn, and waking up at 6:30am for high school despite research showing that a teenagers’ circadian rhythm prevents them from being productive earlier than 9am. I did well in school, but it was at such a high price. I sacrificed sleep and health for gold stars. I sacrificed learning for memorization. Worst of all, I sacrificed my curiosity for a GPA. It seemed like the only questions I was curious about asking anymore were, “Why is our school system like this? Why do classrooms look largely the same today as they did 50+ years ago? Why does there have to be a trade-off between GPA and health? Why is every student treated the same when we are all clearly different? Does doing well in school really even prepare you for doing well in life?”
Then, after graduating college, I taught high school for a year in Chicago, and had my first taste of some of the reasons why education is the way it is — teaching is HARD. Creating fair systems that are individualized and filled with a year’s worth of content that is applicable to a student’s life is not easy. That’s without even taking into consideration the social and emotional state of students that are in the middle of puberty and may not have much support at home. Finally, let’s not forget that these are human being with their own agency that we are talking about. Teaching help me realized one thing about the education system: it will never be perfect. At the same time, however, it sure as hell can be a lot better than we are doing right now.
Asking the real questions
My questions-obsessed mind has not slowed in its curiosity of our (seemingly broken) education system as I’ve aged, but rather it has accelerated. As I have transitioned to work in the private sector, I have begun to see the rapid technological innovation that has taken place over previous decades by Big Tech, which has only made me more curious about the lack of innovation in education. Having seen education from the lens of a student, a teacher, and the now the private EdTech sector, I want to set out on a holistic exploration to understand innovation in education from the view of investors, entrepreneurs, teachers, administrators, students, politicians, and other education advocates. There are three major questions I would like to focus on, but since this is an exploration, these questions will likely evolve and change over time.
1. How have we gotten to where we are today in our education system?
Is it true that schools look the same today as they did 50+ years ago? Has there been any innovation? If not, what is the reason for the stagnation? If so, what are the innovations? How does innovation in education compare to innovation in the private sector in the same time period?
2. What innovations and technologies are advancing education today?
Who is leading these innovation and how? What are the benefits? What are potential drawbacks? What are the biggest hindrances of innovation today? What are the untapped opportunities for innovation in education?
3. How can we better scale high-quality education to be equitable for all?
How can innovation and technology be used to make education more equitable for all, particularly those who don’t have access to high-quality eduction? Why did the high school I graduated from in Milwaukee tend to produce students that did better in college than the one I taught at in Chicago? What solutions are there to close this gap?
So, how’s this all going to work?
As with the questions mentioned above, the format and frequency of this newsletter will likely evolve and fluctuate over time. For now, my goal is to include three sections:
Education-focused Interview
The first section will be an interview with an investor, entrepreneur, teacher, administrator, student, politician, non-profit, or other education advocates focused on the three core questions as well as the guests’ expertise. Again, the goal is to look at innovation through a holistic lens, meaning we need to see the problem from the view of all stakeholders in the education system.
Innovation Spotlight
The second section will introduce an innovative technology, product, technique, model, or policy that is pushing education forward. I’ll give some background research and thoughts on the innovation.
Education Food for Thought
The final section will be a hodge-podge of interesting education resources, podcasts, history mini-lessons, facts, trivia, quotes, data visualizations and graphs, and questions to ponder.
The overall goal of the newsletter is to be thought-provoking, informative, and digestible. Hopefully it even inspires you to take action to help improve our education system.
So many questions, so few answers
Here is where we close Edition #0 of the Grade Unknown — if it feels like this is left without resolution, that’s because it is. I don’t have answers to the large majority of these questions, but I want to. And hopefully you do too. Let’s explore this topic of innovation in education together. I’m tired of complaining about our ostensibly stagnant education system only to come to the conclusion that “someone should really be looking into this and trying to make it better.” Let’s do this together.
Something to noodle on…
“If it is predictable, then it is preventable.” — Gordon Graham
What can we predict that we aren’t preventing when it comes to education? With recent advancements in technology and data science, the range of events that we are able to predict has exploded, but has our effort to prevent negative events grown equally as much?
Thanks for reading, and see you in edition #1!
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