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It appears that education will be the first topic that differentiates between at least two of South Dakota’s Republican gubernatorial candidates. Rep. Dusty Johnson fired the first salvo when he called out Gov. Larry Rhoden for proposing no increase in K-12 funding in his budget. That said, while Johnson says education would be his first focus (and he has called for policy changes such as a statewide ban on cellphones in schools), he didn’t offer any specifics of how he’d increase funding or balance the state’s budget.
It’s easy to argue we are not sufficiently focused on education, especially when K-12 education used to be the largest percentage of the state’s budget but now is not. Many would argue that holding the line on K-12 spending is justified considering the results of that spending. According to the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress report, South Dakota’s math scores remained the same for eighth grade and improved by one point in fourth grade. In reading, scores dropped four points in fourth grade and two points in eighth grade. We do perform better than national averages, but it still means more than 50 percent of the state’s students do not perform at grade level in math and reading.
Everyone seems to have an opinion on how to fix education, but I’d argue the first step is in acknowledging that education isn’t a commodity. It’s not like buying a hammer. If we treat it that way, we fail to understand learning is a process. It’s not a commodity you can just buy. It would be easy if it was – just plunk your money down and emerge educated.
But education requires effort on the learner’s part, and we too often forget that and blame teachers for the failure of students when students have not put in the effort necessary to learn. South Dakota spends a little over $11,000 per student, and the argument goes for that amount of money, students should emerge from K-12 with a good education – certainly more than half of them should be able to read and do math at grade level!
Anyone who has tried to learn anything knows learning takes effort – you have to want to learn. If you aren’t curious, if you don’t care about the subject, it’s unlikely that you’ll be sufficiently motivated to do the hard work of learning; it takes concentration; it takes freedom from distraction; it takes focused study.
I have no idea what percentage of students in K-12 want to learn – but I know it’s not 100 percent (maybe it’s less than 50 percent and the fact that fewer than 50 percent are doing work at grade level simply reflects that fact?). Obviously, teachers can play a role in igniting or extinguishing that desire. Regardless, they cannot force students to learn, and they cannot do the hard work of learning for the student.
Parents certainly play a role in helping students learn, but mostly they play a role in emphasizing the importance of learning. I knew if I brought home a report card full of F’s, my parents would be talking to me about it, but it was also apparent that many parents didn’t think education was important. Today this is reflected by how many students regularly skip school. Truancy is a significant issue in South Dakota, with chronic absenteeism rates rising from 14 percent in the 2018-2019 school year to 21 percent in 2022-2023.
There are countless ideas to improve the quality of education, but I’ve always been a fan of project-based learning. It doesn’t substitute for needing to know the building blocks of a subject, but it provides a purpose for learning by requiring students to apply what they’ve learned. This might mean requiring students to design an experiment using the scientific method in a science class or to requiring them to write a persuasive essay in an English class.
As one example, years ago a high school in the town where I lived started a class in entrepreneurship. Students had to apply to be accepted and the class met in the hour before school started. They didn’t meet at the school but at an area business where they had presentations from business owners on everything from business planning to finance.
The whole class was project-based as students had to create and launch a business by the end of the class. I knew the instructor, and his approach to teaching was different than most students had experienced up until that point. They started with creating a business plan and the first question students asked beyond what a business plan is, was how to go about doing it. He said, figure it out. These were high school juniors and seniors, but they’d never had anyone tell them to figure it out. Many were angry – you’re supposed to teach us how to do it! He said go to the library, do some research, google it. Figure it out.
These students had gone through school being given assignments – study these worksheets, do these problems, read this chapter, and you’ll be tested to see how much of it you can regurgitate on a test. This was different. Here is some information, put it to use on this project. That’s project-based learning – applying what you are trying to learn. If you cannot apply it, you don’t understand it.
Students reported that while hard, they’d learned more in that class than they ever had before. They acknowledged gaining confidence in themselves in the process, and they learned how to work together because they often figured out things as a group and had to work together to make it happen (much like they’d be expected to do in a real job).
Given all the challenges, from unmotivated students to low teacher pay to endless distractions, there is no easy solution for improving education, but there is no doubt the future depends on it. Just one final example that points to the consequences of failing to support public education for all students.
The Program for International Student Assessment measures the reading, mathematics and science literacy of 15-year-olds worldwide every three years. In 2022 the study found that student socio-economic status was closely associated with creativity scores. Advantaged students scored significantly higher than disadvantaged students both in idea appropriateness, originality and value.
The differences in reading and mathematics proficiency between advantaged and disadvantaged students largely accounted for the performance differences in creative thinking. In other words, the inability to read and do math had consequences well beyond just those two subjects – it hampered a student’s ability to think creatively.
Flat funding for public education likely won’t have a huge impact on advantaged students, but for the poor, for the already disadvantaged, it means the performance gaps in reading and math and creative thinking just continue to grow. We know the uneducated account for a disproportionate number of the unemployed, of those who need public support, and of those who end up in our prisons.
I’m sure we’ll hear more rhetoric about education from those who wish to be governor – some will promise more money, some will say the solution is private school vouchers and others will point to eliminating distractions like cellphones and others (OK, maybe only me) will argue we need to ban the use of AI.
On that last point, just consider that today students could just ask Chat GPT to write that business plan –it would be easy, but doing that means they won’t have learned anything about how to create a business plan or, more importantly, how to think for themselves or to work together with others to find a solution to a problem. At which point, I’d argue we’ve managed to eliminate the whole purpose of an education and that seems like a bigger problem for all of us.
