The format of K-12 education is more than a century old. It dates to the era when employment meant farming. The summer break is intended to let children go home to help with the crops. Lost during the long break, as many studies have shown, is the retention of knowledge accumulated during the school year. The beginning of every school year is remedial learning. So, point one: the school year needs to be broken into more or less equal intervals, let's say quarters, with three- to four-week breaks that allow children to engage in recreational or other activities.
Point two: where did the school day come from? It's a lousy fit. Lots of studies show that children coming in early are too sleepy to learn. What's the matter with coinciding the school day with the standard work day: 9 to 5? Yes, it covers the babysitting hours but what's the matter with that? We are now veiling the fact that tens of thousands of kids, just in Anchorage, are effectively "latch-key," lacking any supervision until a parent gets home. Yes, lots of parents do not work 9 to 5, but that is the main model and the best fit.
If the 8-hour day with kids is too long for teachers who must start earlier and end later, and too much instruction for students running out of steam, break the day not just by lunch but by a required, extended period of intramural athletic activities with much lighter supervision. We have too many health problems from kids that are not getting exercise. If that means that intermural activities should shorten, so be it. Interschool competition is good entertainment, but intramural reaches all.
Point three: Why this K-12 model? We now know, beyond dispute, that individual fortunes in life depend upon education both beyond K-12 and starting earlier. Pre-K is more than just a head start. The state's constitutional guarantee of a free public education has been tested for the strength of its rural reach, but not yet for content and quality in a changing world. The state now prepares its K-12 students for a low-skilled, industrial economy that no longer exists. Then underprepared kids (those not nurtured by upper-middle-class parents with the time and education of their own) are summarily dumped out in the street. The teaching staff that has acted as surrogate parents all those years suddenly disappear: "You're on your own kid" -- totally, no mentoring, no direction, virtually no guidance, maybe just hang out for a while until you graduate to jail.
Many, maybe most K-12 grads are underprepared for college, which should, for most, be a community college. Valdez has one; what happened to ours? High schools can bridge the gap in an extra quarter or two taught by the teachers who teach that subject matter. Why have college professors providing high school instruction? They have a different job.
Is the wedge to produce the required changes here a voucher system? No, a privatized educational system will tear apart a state and country already suffering from too many divergent and polarizing influences. Public schools were intended to pull us together. That function is more critical than ever.
Point four: we can decentralize parts of the system where devolution is warranted, particularly Anchorage. Here, we can empower each principal to run her or his school as PhD training and imagination directs, subject to accountability to parents and a more general oversight, without instruction, from both district and state boards.
This formula fits the university even better and is more quickly done. The University of Alaska is saddled with an overgrown central administration. The chancellors can tell us what they need. Split the money between overall savings and each campus's absorption of the decentralized function. Ask department chairs what they can do without interference from above. Ask the high school principals the same questions. Educational forms are in need of a shakeup, but not a stickup. Ask your board candidates, ask the regents: are you ready to address these issues?
Former Alaska Attorney General John Havelock also taught at UAA for 10 years. Four of his children attended Anchorage schools before going on to college (including UAF) and graduate work.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.