Improving K-12 Education in America

A few ideas

Curriculum

1. Have multi-day field trips for all middle and high school students, every year.

   1. Work with regional field stations to accommodate this.

2. Outdoor day trips at least 6x / year for all grades.

3. Re-fund and rebuild music and art programs.

   1. Music: all analog, at least until middle school. Include percussion.

4. Encourage open inquiry and, in high school, longer-term projects, rather than checklists of methods or outcomes that are currently being passed off as science.

5. Focus on the local natural and physical world, and learn from comparisons to schools in other places:

   1. For instance: How long is the sun above the horizon on the Winter solstice? Are there flowers growing in March? How about in a state far away? Why is there a difference?

   2. Use local natural history as a segue into local history, as well as art.

   3. Reveal and teach about things that fill people with awe, such as the night sky, the ocean, a horizon that is far, far away.

      1. Every child should see a dark night sky at least once every year.

6. Bring back Shop and Home Economics classes. Do not restrict access to classes by sex, but also do not expect equal interest in each class by members of both sexes.

   1. Shop: consider only manual tools until high school.

   2. Home Economics: include practical math like budgeting and bookkeeping.

---

Health

1. Later start times for schools, especially middle and high schools (whose students can and should be encouraged to be responsible for getting themselves started in the mornings).

2. Longer and/or more frequent recess for elementary school students.

   1. Encourage free play during recess, with no top-down enforcement regarding inclusion in games that children invent and play.

3. Reestablish the Presidential Fitness Test, which encouraged individual excellence. It was replaced in 2013 with the Presidential Youth Fitness Program, which instead focuses on equity and inclusion. Bring competition back.

4. Encourage sports participation.

5. School lunch to be as local, fresh, and organic as possible. Connect it to the school garden when possible.

6. No vending machines at schools, until and unless the contents are improved.

7. Make adherence to the childhood vaccine schedule optional.

8. Prohibit bribes for compliant student behavior (e.g. cookies for Covid shots).

---

Reality, Family, and Biological Sex

1. Information about students under 16 years old shall not be kept from their parents.

2. Remove the new Title IX reforms, including especially protected status for the fictional category “gender identity.”

3. Sex Ed: proceed with caution. No trans ideology. Encourage children to be whatever they want to be, except the impossible. No child can become a dragon or a butterfly; similarly, no boy can become a girl, nor can any girl become a boy.

4. Bathrooms: never “gender neutral” except when single occupancy. Males to use men’s bathrooms only; females to use women’s bathrooms only.

5. Locker rooms to be single sex.

---

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

1. Eradicate DEI offices and staff.

2. Do not provide sponsorship or funds for meetings that are exclusionary based on immutable demographic characteristics, with the exception of:

   1. Sports, to be separated by sex (not gender)

   2. Student-created and led clubs, which can be eligible for small funds.

3. Address class-based inequalities of opportunity.

   1. Support and build programs similar to the Gilman International Scholarship Program (run by the State Department), which provides small grants to low-income undergraduates to study abroad.

---

Technology

1. No computers or tablets in elementary school classrooms.

2. Intentional technology only in middle and high school classrooms.

3. Phones:

   1. Elementary and middle school: no phones at school. If students travel to school with phones for practical reasons, they forfeit them at start of school, to be retrieved at the end of the day.

   2. High school: no phones inside classrooms. Have drop boxes for phones outside each classroom.

---

Administration and Bureaucracy

1. Get rid of the assessment metrics and—only if necessary—rebuild from the ground up. Existing metrics supposedly measure learning and progress, but are generally misleading at best, backwards at worst.

   1. Less paperwork, more freedom, fewer scripts for teachers to follow.

2. Clean up and streamline the Org Charts, from individual schools to the Dept of Education.

   1. More teachers, fewer administrators.

   2. Then: Reduce class size.

   3. Next: Reduce school size.

3. Leave schools free to experiment with alternative curricular structures and pedagogies, including but not limited to Montessori, Waldorf, full-time immersive programs, and for high schools, Great Books curricula.

4. Reform or eradicate the Schools of Education.

---

Facilities

1. Decentralize: More, smaller schools are preferable to fewer, larger schools. More nimble, more creative, more human.

2. Grow: Build gardens and grow food. Encourage children to get their hands dirty several times a week.

3. Beautify:

   1. Encourage art, including by students where appropriate.

      1. Frequently freshen with bright, fresh paint.

   2. Regularly update facilities with a combination of skilled tradesmen (carpenters, tile layers, plumbers, etc.) and summer jobs for high school students, who learn from the professionals.

---

Teachers

1. Hire young people with degrees in science to teach science; degrees in math to teach math; degrees in history to teach history, etc.

   1. Allow exceptions for the talented and creative who have no degrees, especially until the universities right themselves and the degrees once more have meaning.

   2. Remove or substantively revise barriers to teaching such as teacher certifications and credential programs.

   3. Hire only those with curiosity about the world. No petty tyrants; no ideologues.

2. Give good teachers the freedom to teach. Allow them to be creative in the classroom. Encourage them to be uncertain, and to work with students in discovery, rather than being the only authority with the answers.

3. Create Summer travel grants program for teachers to apply for, to encourage them to go new places and learn about the world, and bring that knowledge back to their students in the Fall. Encourage application for and involvement in this program up to once every three years.

---

Please add your own suggestions in the comments below.