Scaling in Education

From today’s New York Times article, The Broken Promises of Choice in New York City Schools.

“Ultimately, there just are not enough good schools to go around. And so it is a system in which some children win and others lose because of factors beyond their control — like where they live and how much money their families have.”

The structures of education do not scale well. This is because good lessons, good classrooms, and good schools are all sourced from people, and people do not scale well. People cannot be copied. The human mind is exceedingly, beautifully complex – a fact that underlies the wonderful challenge of teaching. The talents, ideas, and experience of people that understand this reality are essential to making a school what it can be.

The work that must be done centers on building a culture that acknowledges and values the human basis of our profession. It takes energy and time from human beings to turn an empty room into a learning space. Budgeting for all of the costs of the inputs, financial or otherwise, is necessary to do this work.

Ideas scale easily because it costs virtually nothing to share them. Cultivating the relationships that are necessary to use those ideas to make opportunities for children needs to be our focus.

People matter. We should be skeptical of anyone that seeks to minimize this reality.