Reforming the Rules of the Road for Education

Ever stop and wonder why we drive on roads the way we do?  Sure there are laws and financial reasons, but usually it's for our safety and for the safety of others.  However, there's an even bigger benefit - the equality of everyone's opportunity to get where they want to go.  Why can't public education work like that?

When we learn how to drive we realize that what works best is to become part of the flow.  We learn to have courtesy and patience because it works for the best - for us, and for everyone else, too.  We drive on freeways and streets determining our own path and pace - confident we will get to our destinations, while hopefully not hindering anyone else from their path, pace, and destination.   Shouldn't education allow our children the same opportunity?

Think about it... we signal and turn, stop, go, accelerate, and slow down in an enormous flow of mixed intentions, different desires, and unique driving styles.  Yet, it works.  We all get to go where we want to go.  We all have an equal opportunity to enter the stream of traffic, choose a road, proceed as far as we choose, and end up at our destination of choice.  Yet, before William Phelps Eno wrote “Rules of the Road” in 1903, the misery of congestion and mishaps was an accepted part of life on the road.  People didn't know what else was possible.  They couldn't conceive a society where people were courteous about sharing the road.  And, you know what I think is funny, people who seek to reform schools don't see equality of opportunity as realistic.  They say the logistics won't allow it.

Soon after writing the book Mr. Eno wrote the first ever municipal traffic code for New York City, then helped London and Paris fix their traffic issues.   Having never driven a vehicle himself, he was able to observe the issues and possibilities, and then think of a system that allowed everyone to flow instead of clog.  He described a system where grace and mutual respect allowed everyone the chance to get somewhere more easily.

The old system, based on "I do things my way, and to Hell with everyone else" had proven to be a culture of desperate survival.  Looking at our current national system of roadways, stoplights, crosswalks, and painted lines, it has become a case of - the many making things better for the greater good of all.  We still get to do things our way within the new system, but instead of "to Hell with everyone else," we work together to create a flow of equal opportunity.  We have taken Eno's idea and created a highly functional community of participation; effectively encouraging civility and allowing everyone who wants to... to enter into the system, use it to their liking to attain their specific results, and then to leave the system until they need it again.  It is the ultimate "Opt-in" community of mutual opportunity.

Our public school systems and all the reform/improvement efforts are much like the city streets of 1902 New York City.  According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2010 our public K-12 schools had more than 3.6 million teachers, 3.4 million administrators and support staff, 55 million students, and more than 132,000 separate schools.  Add to that the tens of thousands of educational technology companies, non-profits, reform groups, political lobbyist groups, publishers, authors, parents of students, and government education departments, and we see an enormous population of people interested in improving education, but there are very few, if any, coordinating influences.   The system is not set up to grant students equal access to whatever paths of learning they want to follow.  Instead, just as in New York City before traffic laws were passed, we have many students who are desperately trying to get where they want to go despite the clogged roadways, gridlocked intersections, and mounting frustrations.  We also have many students and reformers who have given up.  They just stand on the sidewalks - looking upon the mess with incredulity.  Thankfully, just as they had then. we have some who try to help by stepping into the fray to direct traffic.  But, even those who are trying to help have no agreed upon system of waving their arms and giving directions.  From one street to the next the customs and expectations are very different. The same is true in our schools.

We have no consistency from one school to the next, from one classroom to the next.  How can this be equal?  How can we offer one child one education and another a different education and say it is equal?  It is not, and their future opportunities are changed by what opportunities they have in school.

Not only do we need a system that allows every student to safely and equally get where they want to go in life, we also need a system for the people who are helping in the street.  When a study is done on student drop out rates and a key factor is found, how can someone who wants to help pitch in?  How can others in another state take advantage of that valuable information?  Isn't it time we reformed our rules for the roads of education reform?

A new system is just around the corner.

What do you think it looks like?