Public Education Major Challenges

Volatile & often inadequate funding
Weak Student Engagement and Agency
1. Mostly Passive learning experience with little choice
Severe teacher shortages & churn
1. Long & costly path to credentialing
2. Low pay & high cost of living
3. Poor working conditions (Large class sizes, limited prep time, behavior issues, and pressure to raise test scores)
4. Impossible list of responsibilities
5. Frustrating outcomes
6. Lack of autonomy / agency over environment
Persistent Inequity of outcomes
Challenging Regulatory Environment
Unpredictability of the jobs and required skills students will need
Complex, distracting and rapidly changing technology

Potential Solutions:

Idea: Reduce class size by increasing free periods

Requirements for Classroom Technology - Intentional Use and AI alignment

More Student-Directed Learning (See Project Curiosity)

Core Media Literacy and Information Science Coursework

Assessments that measure the level of agency students take in their work

Idea: Reduce class size by increasing free periods

Reducing class sizes would reduce students' total instructional hours, a state requirement. However reducing the number of students in class at a given time would lower the student:teacher ratio, improving the learning during that time. Several studies show that learning improvements from reduced class size more than compensate for reduced instructional time per student.

Requirements for Classroom Technology - Intentional Use and AI alignment

K-12 teachers are in a constant battle with students over appropriate use of devices, from student cell phones to school laptops and tablets. Students and educators are not equipped to compete with the powerful technology companies applying their wealth of resource to capture our attention and engagement. New AI-first devices are emerging that can see, converse, and understand the user's intentions. We must ensure that classroom devices are aligned to student-learning and well-being. Just as young people require some amount of adult supervision in the physical world, they need protection from the information world in which it is much easier for harmful actors to reach our children. In the future I believe we should introduce devices in the classroom that can be programmed to ensure they are used as intended. With AI systems that can now see and understand what is on the user's screen, this is already achievable. A goal of mine is to both work with the tech companies (Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Apple, Meta) and their platforms to create a AI first experience in which the AI is instructed to monitor the screen and block innappropriate use, and keep the user accountable to how they intended to use it.

More Student-Directed Learning (See Project Curiosity)

Core Media Literacy and Information Science Coursework

Coursework combining reading, critical reasoning, data science, probability and statistics to teach students to analyze and verify information.

Assessments that measure the level of agency students take in their work

Students must learn to take ownership over their learning. Studies of alternatives grading systems that assess "agentic engagement" show a positive impact on learning.

Reeve, J., Jang, H. (2022). Agentic Engagement. In: Reschly, A.L., Christenson, S.L. (eds) Handbook of Research on Student Engagement. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07853-8_5