Last week, in my series on education, I outlined what I believe are the top three problems facing education: a lack of practical preparation for life after school, unequal access to quality education, and rigid regulations.  Below, I discuss solutions to each of the problems I presented.

School should prepare students for life by providing information about a variety of options and more practical opportunities like internships.

With growing student loan debt and skyrocketing tuition for colleges, college shouldn’t be the default, but rather one of many options presented to students.  Districts need career counselors who will provide full disclosure on the high costs of four-year universities and present alternatives like technical schools and gap year employment.   Defining success solely as a test score not only sends the wrong message to students, but also implies college is the only path when it should be one of many paths.

Furthermore, all students need more information about current labor market trends and various job-specific certifications and technical training. Districts should design curriculums with more space for electives and also allocate federal and state funding for programs like internships, vocational education, and culture labs that allow students opportunities to explore passions, develop skills, gain experience and ultimately increase their likelihoods of being hired after graduation, whatever path they may choose.  Revelatory programs like one in Salt Lake City, where students will work, run, and maintain local farms not only gives them hands on experience but concurrently prepares them for college in more practical ways. Giving young adults the chance to problem solve with real-world applications better prepares them for the future and offers far more choice to the student than exists today.

Providing equal access to quality education means combating hunger in the classroom and increasing school and program choice.

Instead of solely focusing on what goes into the classroom, we need to address what is occurring in the classroom.  Hunger in the classroom is a serious concern especially for the increasing population of homeless students.  As we saw last week, child hunger is on the rise in 94 percent of schools.  Alternative Breakfast Methods like Breakfast in the Classroom, Grab n’ Go, and Second Chance Breakfast are all a step in the right direction.  Another solution would be to expand the coverage of federal lunch programs.  The lack of compassion we’ve seen in the news over the last couple weeks is appalling.  One worker, enforcing school policies to the extreme threw out a student’s lunch in front of him because he was short 26 cents. Another kitchen manager was fired when the district learned she gave hungry students free lunches.  There is no doubt that hunger impacts learning, so the first step is to make sure students are in the best position to learn.

Underprivileged students also suffer from a dearth of educational choices. We know that school choice matters: students in Washington, D.C.’s Opportunity Scholarship Program, which affords scholarships to students to attend participating private schools, graduate at a rate 21 percent higher than if they stayed in their designated public schools. School choice can extend beyond the traditional private and public schools to online learning, vocational schools, and charter schools. It can mean more after school programs like culture labs, mentorships, and more electives. Arts programs are another key to development and providing equal access.  Study after study has shown that participation in Arts and Music programs gives underprivileged students a sense of belonging in their community, increases verbal intelligence, and enhances brain function. Furthermore, when public schools adopt extracurricular events like debate, namely urban debate leagues, they’ve produced staggering results where kids in schools from underprivileged areas have record graduation rates and vast improvements on grades, college acceptance, and test scores than schools that don’t offer the programs. Debate can be a HUGE equalizer for people to learn and make sure that if they aren’t getting access to what they need in the classroom – debate is its own classroom in and of itself. Consider it an additional check.

Schools should be empowering teachers, not binding them to rigid and archaic regulations.

Raise your hand if a teacher has helped you to become the person you are today.  I don’t have enough limbs to adequately demonstrate just how important teachers have been to me.  Teachers are our best hope for addressing the problems in our school system.  Instead of holding teachers accountable solely to performance on standardized tests, teachers should have more control over what they teach in the classroom.  Standards like Common Core as a teacher points out in the Washington Post, kill innovation, adaptation to an ever-changing world, and place emphasis on subjects rather than the process of learning. When teachers innovate, become involved with mentoring, and take measures to enhance skills, they also deserve more compensation. Money spent on the massive quantity of standardized tests could be better used for innovative pay and providing incentives for teachers to creatively teach their students.  Teachers are simply not utilized enough in the status quo for their input and ability, and one very simple solution would be to switch focus away from outdated federal guidelines and more to a teacher-centric form of education.

Teachers should always be rewarded proportionate to their effort.  Under the current system of rigid rules, teachers receive the same scheduled raises and tenure.  And while we are thankful for teachers, we’ve all had some who have gone above and beyond the call of duty and some that haven’t. Teachers who go above and beyond deserve more. The IMPACT program in Washington D.C., while controversial, has shown impressive results where successful teachers, evaluated not just on their student’s testing scores, but rather from thorough, in class evaluations from peers, other teachers, and administrators, has effectively given raises in salaries to great teachers and helped remove underperforming teachers from the system. Many industries tailor bonus programs to performance; so should schools. America should be in the business of retaining great teachers and programs that advocate for great teaching through financial and tangible benefit accrual should be enhanced or implemented nationwide.

These solutions are a step in the right direction.  I encourage all of you, especially teachers, to comment on this post and suggest input and possibly other solutions based on your observations of the US Education system.