What Do We Really Care About?

Given what we’ve all be through over the last year, one question has unequivocally been surfaced: What do we really care about? Not the question “what do I care about”, but the version that’s about “we”, the collective population across every state in the U.S.

A few detailed extensions of this general query include:

• Do we care that every citizen is treated the same regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other diversity identifier?
• Do we care that every citizen has sufficient means to access housing and ample nutrition?
• Do we care that every child has access to a high quality education?

It’s this last question that we should be thinking the most about, particularly given how central a fully educated populace is in ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to thrive. Ultimately, the question becomes more precise. Do we really want to invest in this ideal that we will collectively ensure that every student has access to a K12 public education that enables them to chart a viable path forward when they’re 18 years old?

It’s hard reading an op-ed like this one from a former teacher and now current public education administrator that so succinctly describes the demoralized state of our public education system, and the precarious path it’s careening down. Indeed, it’s a path that so clearly forks into two cohorts: those “haves” who safely navigate public education (or who have the wherewithal to hop off the public education train for independent school options) and those “have nots” who fall below the bar we would define as a quality K12 education. Living in San Francisco and following the Twitter rants from the Silicon Valley-ites complaining about how much California sucks, whilst debating whether they should move to Miami or Austin so they can quit paying state income taxes and can avoid the painful reflection they see in the faces of so many homeless people, only hammers home how far we’ve drifted from a societal commitment to ensuring everyone’s included as an educated “have” versus “have not”.

Whether material or not, the exodus from Silicon Valley signifies a clear threat to whether this country will deliver on the promise of equitable access to education by the time every citizen finishes high school. If there’s one thing that’s been laid bare by the events of the last year it’s that this lack of commitment to investing in the public good isn’t unique to a faction of Bay Area elites. We see examples of it across the country — an outcry from millions that taxes are too high everywhere and that we the people should keep most (if not all) of “our” money to ourselves. To be clear, I’m a huge fan of capitalism. But exactly when did we lose the collective belief as a nation that self-optimizing one’s own bank account should rank above ensuring that nobody should be denied a quality public education?

So what about the state of public education. Again, read the view of this educator crafted op-ed. I did, and here are my thoughts:

• We need to spend more money on our public education system. Stop the false choice argument that schools have enough money and that it’s just an exercise in being more efficient with the money they already receive. I could be wrong, but I’m going to guess per student spending hasn’t increased in real terms over the last several decades. Is it no wonder student readiness at 18 years old across the board isn’t where we need it to be as look through 2021 and beyond?
• We need to compensate our teachers much better than we do today. Teaching should be a highly sought after profession — in fact, with the exception of our military, frontline emergency workers (e.g. police and fire), and frontline healthcare workers, who does more important work than teachers? Increase their salaries, make more contributions to their 401K accounts, and please let them expense all the materials they go out of pocket to finance in support of their kiddos. [Note: For those who argue that school finances are hampered by entitlement costs tied to educator pensions, ask whether that would be the case if compensation were rightsized during an educator’s active years?]
• We need to dramatically upgrade the technology stack that teachers, students, and parents use together in our public schools. Lack of investment here has put our schools miles behind the technology tools and apps that these same Ts, Ss, and Ps are using in their daily lives as consumers and in the workplace. This makes absolutely zero sense. At the same time, we need to give teachers and administrators room to maneuver once these technology investments are in place so that teachers, students and parents have ample time to collaborate around a student’s learning journey. What does this mean? It means not every technology upgrade will go smoothly or will deliver a 10 times increase in student outcomes in six months. Give educators the support and runway needed to upgrade the learning technologies within our public education system. Take the long view here and think about how these technology tools will bring us to the ultimate outcome over the next decade — that every 18 year old is educated in a way that enables a promising set of options after high school graduation.
• We need to ensure that we provide the appropriate supports if we’re going to keep asking our schools to go beyond educating students and to also be required to help address the societal inequities created over the last century. In many ways it makes sense for schools to deliver food services and before/after school programming for kids. These elements are all highly correlated to attendance, engagement, and ultimately student success, but these services cannot be fully funded out of the same budgets schools are expected to pull from to ensure a first grader learns to read or a 12th grader is STEM-ready for life after high school.

So, let’s ask ourselves, what do we really care about? For all the calls that we come together at this time, and that we do so in an effort to narrow a divide that appears to be widening between those that “have” and those that “have not”, it certainly doesn’t feel like we’re putting our money where our mouth is. If we really want to create a future that’s built around equitable access to everything or everyone, then it has to start with us committing to invest more in public education. And that goes for those of us living in Silicon Valley, as well as those living in Miami and Austin.