The Business of Teaching: What Education Can Learn from the Business World
If we could somehow transport Benjamin Franklin to 2020, there would be many things he wouldn’t recognize. But there’s one thing he’d be perfectly familiar with: the American educational system. While dunce caps and corporal punishment have thankfully disappeared in many instances, Franklin’s own vision of schools “training up youth in wisdom and virtue” has become an unfortunate casualty of our test score-obsessed society. And we still teach and administer our schools in the same way we have for centuries.
“Put simply? In many ways, schools are stuck in the eighteenth century.”
Stagnation and lack of change are rampant in the public school environment. In contrast, in the business world, innovation is a necessity for survival. Businesses that fail to innovate disappear into the oblivion of bankruptcy and liquidation. This stark reality forces businesses to be on the constant lookout for competitive advantages.
Of course, we can’t afford to let neighborhood schools fail and cease to exist like some businesses ultimately will. And while you may be picturing the combination of business principles and education like some sort of dystopian nightmare—schools efficiently churning out carbon copies of students like an assembly line—this is an unfair characterization. Schools shouldn’t be factories, and what I wish to suggest is instead this: what the business world can contribute to education is successful approaches to organizational and leadership challenges.
By their very nature, market-driven economies force best practices to bubble up to the surface. In essence, the arena of business is the ultimate proving ground for theories and ideas. As an example, here are three quick, business-tested ideas that parents and communities should push for in education:
1. Pay teachers what they’re worth
One of the greatest drains on our current educational system is teacher turnover. Over two-thirds of all teachers leave a school for reasons other than retirement, and 44% of new teachers leave the teaching profession altogether within five years. The associated costs of time, resources, and loss of expertise are staggering, and both our schools and our children are harmed.
Leaders in business have known one of the ways to fix turnover problems for decades: you increase what you pay your employees. The savings associated with reducing turnover often more than offset the increased salary costs. Despite this reality, teacher salaries in the United States are well below the salaries of other comparably educated professionals. And to make matters worse, many teachers end up buying their own classroom supplies to supplement the meager budgets they are given. One teacher in California made headlines by auctioning off advertising space on his own calculus tests just to raise enough money to pay for the paper the tests were printed on. If we could pay teachers what they’re worth, then highly skilled professionals would be less likely to leave teaching for greener pastures in other industries.
2. Demand local control
In the business world, if the nature of a business requires individual adaptation at the local level, then top-down, one-size-fits-all mandates rarely work. People and communities are unique, and they require unique approaches and solutions. And yet, how do politicians try to “fix” schools? With top-down, federally mandated programs like No Child Left Behind (NCLB). It’s no wonder that educational reform at the national level is largely ineffectual, generating substantially more paperwork than progress. It’s only through local control that innovations such as personalized learning plans, flexible curriculum, or technological innovations can thrive.
Considerable research has shown that both schools and businesses innovate best when they are empowered to act on the local level. We need to give teachers and individual schools the autonomy to make decisions. Teachers will never jump out of bed at 6:00 a.m. to fight a compliance war for the sole purpose of training and remediating students to pass government-mandated tests. However, when teachers feel that they are making a difference in the lives of those with whom they work—helping their students to become something, not just learn something—that is when you see the transformational changes necessary for our nation’s schools and classrooms. We need to give teaching back to the professionals.
3. Create a culture of listening and feedback
One of the most important things that successful businesses have learned to do is listen. Companies like Apple have built their brands by actively soliciting input from both their customers and their employees. Since parents, teachers, students, and communities have a vested interest in their schools, administrators would do well to enthusiastically listen to what they have to say. Dr. Stephen R. Covey even asked, “After all, parents have a huge say in what school their children will attend, so who better is there to approach for feedback?” (The Leader in Me: How Schools and Parents Around the World Are Inspiring Greatness, One Child at a Time)
The groundswell of opinion needs to start with parents, teachers, and local administrators. I am certainly not arguing for the abolishment of the public education system—after all, I’m a product of the system and can see its inherent strengths. But in order for education to innovate and adapt to the changing landscape of our world, it might be necessarily to adopt principles that have been tested in the crucible of business management—not because education is a business, but because our children are our business.
Aaron J. Pond is a doctoral candidate in Educational Leadership. Aaron teaches both by day and by night, working as a schoolteacher and curriculum developer in Salt Lake City and teaching test preparation in his free time. He studied astrophysics as an undergraduate and has since earned an MBA.