I have a confession: some times I can't take it. Yes, some times when I can't take it, I do as Peter Finch from Network instructed us to do and go to my window and scream, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it any more!" Other times, I sit down at my computer and scream into the cyber-void.
But at other times, I think about giving in to the Dark Side as Darth Vader urged Luke to do. As Garrison Keillor remarked a couple years ago in reference to being a Republican, it would be so easy, wouldn't it? How wonderful it would be to truly believe that all we had to do was punish teachers for being lazy! What a bounce I'd have in my step if I believed in the power of market competition and "choice" to solve all those nasty problems! How splendid it would be to put a "Throwing More Money at the Problem Is Not the Solution!" bumper sticker on my car. Ah, to be a conservative! What bliss!
So, donning my steel helmet and black cape a la Darth Vader, here are my dire, satirical predictions for Education in America by the year 2020. I think this qualifies as The Worst Worst Case Scenario, i.e., Conservative Utopia.
Note - for the satirically-challenged out there and to anticipate the claims of "utter nonsense" and paranoia, please understand that "satire" is defined as "the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues."
Here we go . . .
1) The dark forces of The Standards and Accountability Movement will engulf higher ed in the next 10 years.
2) Expect to see publicly-funded institutions of higher ed be subject to NCLB-like provisions, including:
a) standardized testing
b) standardized exit exams for graduating seniors
c) standards-based and standardized curricula that attach specific measurable outcomes to every course
3) Expect to see more talk about "Universities are not doing their jobs" and "The Chinese are gonna eat us for lunch" and "If we don't act now, our grandchildren will all be working at drive-thru curry restaurants." This talk will fuel above-mentioned reforms.
4) Wild card prediction: higher ed will become compulsory, at least a 2-year associate's degree, by 2020 (cf. "The Chinese are gonna eat us for lunch" and "If we don't act now, our grandchildren will all be working at drive-thru curry restaurants.")
5) K-12 and higher ed will become inextricaby linked; state boards of K-12 education and higher education will merge into one PreK - 20 Board of Education; this body will create the content standards and standardized curricula for all PreK - 20 classes; students will have e-portfolios of their work, starting at preK, that will attach to them and follow them for their whole lives, past their academic careers and into their professional lives; these will replace the traditional resume; employers will know everything there is to know about prospective employees, including how many detentions they got in the 8th grade. This will give new meaning to the threat, "This will go on your permanent record."
6) The pedagogy of the future will be The Revenge of the Lecture; superstar "teachers" will be trained as motivational speakers and will deliver course content to students in K-20. They will be paid in excess of $150K per year. This will attract people and convince them to go into "teaching" rather than yacht refurbishing or investment banking. Before, during, and after the lecture, classroom paraprofessionals will be scurrying about in either face-to-face settings or online as students watch the lecture via a laptop/tablet computer. These paraprofessionals will all have 2-year associate degrees from community colleges. They will be paid $30K per year. There will be a 20:1 ratio of superstar "teachers" (aka "subject matter experts," aka "Learning Managers," aka "Paraprofessional Facilitators," aka "Make Me Feel Good About Working for $30K Per Year'ists") to paraprofessionals and a 500:1 ratio of superstar teachers to students. This means that each paraprofessional is responsible for 25 children, the currently accepted class size level. (This, by the way, is not that different from what Chris Whittle, Edison's CEO and founder, envisions.)
Funding Model:
500 students @ $10K per student = $5,000,000
1 superstar teacher @ $150K = $150,000
20 paraprofessionals @ $30K = $600,000
NET SURPLUS - $4.4 million per 500 students
($10K per student is about what the current average funding level is, so this will need to be adjusted up in the future.)
7) There are roughly 47 million students currently enrolled in grades K-12. There are about 3.25 million full-time and part-time teachers in public schools. In the above funding model, the 47 million students would be divided into 500 member cohorts and assigned one rock star teacher. So 47 million divided by 500 = 94,000 groups of students, thus 94,000 rock star teachers. So we go from 3.25 million teachers to 94,000. The AFT and the NEA will be dead by 2020, abolished by popular demand for being obstructionist and mired in corruption and self-interest (The argument "Aren't all unions mired in corruption and self-interest?" will have finally won.) The 94,000 rock stars will be members of a professional organization that is funded largely by the Gates Foundation that trains them in how to be Highly Skilled Managers Adept in Multimodal Assessment and Team Building Through Pay for Performance Pedagogy Models (PfPPM). Rock star pay is tied to the performance of the members of their 500-member cohorts, aka "children." Rock stars are also trained in management Strategies that Maximize the Performance of Paraprofessionals (SMPP) under their supervision.
94,000 rock stars @ $150K a pop will cost $14.1 billion.
You'll need to hire 1,880,000 paraprofessionals (1 paraprofessional for every 25 kids, with 20 paraprofessionals assigned to each rock star). 1,880,000 paraprofessionals @ $30K a pop will cost $56.4 billion.
Added together, the cost of rock stars and paraprofessionals comes to $70.5 billion per year. Compare this to the $500 billion that is currently spent on public K-12.
The $429.5 billion difference (aka "net surplus") represents The Educational Pot of Gold for private, for-profit educational management organizations (EMO's) like Edison.
EMO's will dominate "public" education in 2020. The $429.5 billion in public funds will be carved up amongst a handful of both privately-held and publicly-traded companies like Edison, Kaplan, Princeton Review, White Hat, and others that will enter the market over the next 10 years.
Thus, "the teaching profession" will have been turned over to motivational speakers/educational performance managers. The work of education will be performed by paraprofessional serfs who will sing about the opportunity to make a difference and work with kids. Because their health insurance is tied to the scores of their students (low scores = higher deductible), they are motivated to put in the hours necessary to improve students' scores so they can trim healthcare costs. They love the fact that they are teaching ONLY 25 students as compared to the 35 and 40 students they were teaching in 2010. Since the paraprofessional serfs are not teachers, they do not complain about reading from and following a scripted curriculum. In fact, they love it! No more guesswork! No more lesson planning! And, since the majority of assessments are multiple choice and conducted online, they never have to grade anything! This gives them tons of extra time to give more drills and more tests. The students do all the work; the serfs just click a few buttons now and again and read from the manual. What a time-saver!
Because the students are motivated and entertained by the daily Pump Up Your Scores! lesson given by their rock star, they cheerily complete the daily online assessments. Since they take these assessments daily, and since automatic feedback is provided the instant they submit an answer to a multiple-choice question, the students get really good at taking the assessments. Since they get really good at taking the assessments, their scores go up. Since the students and serfs and rock stars are all assessed on the basis of their test scores, and since serfs' healthcare is tied to test scores, and since rock star bonus pay is tied to test scores, everyone is incredibly happy. It's WIN-WIN-WIN!
Best of all, parents are happy, too. They see their children's test scores go up and up and up. Look at them go! They occasionally glance over the shoulders of their children as they watch the rock stars on their computers. The rock stars are so funny! They are so smart! And they are so cute! And they actually like me AND my children!
The rock stars make the occasional visit to the classrooms, to look the serfs in the eye to thank them for their hard work, to shake hands with this month's top test taker, and to dine with members of the local PTA. The PTA members all crowd around the rock star, asking him for his autograph, posing for pictures, and bragging to the unlucky parents the next day, "I actually met Billy's teacher! Oops . .. sorry. I mean Learning Manager!"
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