I cannot help but think the most recent televised Republican Party Presidential debates resembled a high school student election more than one for the leadership of our country.  We’ve learned very little from these debates about the candidates’ actual policy positions and have spent a great deal of time analyzing their personalities.  It feels like a popularity contest – just like in high school.

For obvious reasons, I am most interested on the Republican and Democrat candidates’ views on public education.  There’s no issue that will have a more dramatic and long term impact on our nation’s trajectory.  But look at how little we know about their actual positions or their vision for the future of the country’s education system. 

This is an issue that is front of mind for every parent of school-aged children (we have roughly 50M children in grades K-12 in America) and every employer who cares about workforce readiness.  It is a topic of discussion at every dinner table and in every executive suite.  It’s an issue that could capture voters’ attention and truly address one of their most important concerns. 

I am not going to be running for President of the United States any time soon.  However, should any of these current Presidential candidates be interested in reading this blog (ahem), I would frame the entire massive, complex topic of public education into three simple questions with bite-size positions that could easily translate to any forum – including those who are hungry for sound bites.

1. What is wrong with public education today?

Obsolescence. 

Our public schools overwhelmingly do not prepare kids for the jobs of today let alone the jobs of tomorrow. Our schools tend to emphasize content, but not the skills and competencies needed to eventually be employed in the 21st century.  The half-life of any knowledge of specific content knowledge has become extremely short.  We need to teach our students how to think as much as we do what to think.

2.  How do we fix what’s wrong with public education?

Innovation.  The only antidote for obsolescence is innovation.  Innovation requires multiple opportunities to take risks – to prove and scale or disprove and fail.  That means giving parents choice (monopolies do not need to innovate) on where they send their children to school.  It also means that the providers of those choices – charter schools for example – need to be highly accountable, so that the choices are meaningful. The Federal Government’s role in public education is limited, but it can and should fund innovation. 

3.  How do we scale what’s working and innovative and reboot or reset what is not?

Incentivize.  Fund promising, innovative models and hold them to specific measures of accountability to grow and scale.  And defund or radically turnaround models of school that are broken – building in the same level of accountability. The federal government should not usurp local and State accountability, but it can provide carrots and sticks when performance falls below acceptable minimums. 

Forget kissing the baby, our Presidential candidates should focus on educating the baby by incentivizing schools to emphasize not just content acquisition, but 21st century skill and competency acquisition that underscore innovation.