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John --
In last week's Forward
Thinking, we asked you where you think the government
should invest in our education system. We also expanded our surveys
across several social media platforms, both to increase access but to
see if results would differ between them. What did you say, and how
much alignment was there?
On X:
On Facebook: 
On Threads (note the small response
rate):
On LinkedIn:
Looking at the results, two things stick
out to us.
First, the top answer across the board
was increasing teacher pay. Teachers are among the lowest paid workers
with commensurate education levels, and many school systems are so
under-resourced that teachers have to spend their own money to buy
classroom supplies. The majority of you across all platforms called
for properly resourcing our school systems.
The second thing we noticed is that there
were general trends across all platforms. Better teacher pay
resoundingly beat out the other options, but the other options all had
significant support and were pretty clustered together. We'll likely
remove teacher pay from the equation in a follow up question and focus
on these other options to see where you would focus once teachers are
properly compensated.
Education reform is complex, and so there
were a (record-breaking) number of comments left to dive into:
Increasing Equity In Education
- By far the largest category of responses we received involved
creating a more equitable school system that tailors education to the
needs of each pupil, instead of to the average student.
- This would include increased special education resourcing as well
as more options for vocational programs and increased support for
gifted and talented students.
Curriculum Modernization
- Calls for modernizing our standard curriculum were constant
refrains in the comment sections this week. The foundation of our
curriculum was set before the internet and modern workforce practices
changed the skills needed for employment. Our curriculum should change
to match.
Affordable and Accessible Higher Education
- The cost of university and the debt burden most students have to
undertake to earn a degree is gutting our burgeoning middle class. You
all want a solution to this problem, whether it's debt relief or more
access to public universities for lower costs.
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