Five surprisingly great ideas to improve children’s education

While most of the world is focused on the coronavirus pandemic, I thought I’d share some thoughts and ideas that could be implemented to improve educational outcomes. In general, I focused this paper’s numbers and statistics on the state of Michigan. I find state-level politics more interesting than federal or local. States are like mini countries with different restrictions than the federal government, the main ones being that money is scarcer, but their administration is a bit more organized and leaner. All of the policy ideas I wrote about were meant to be affordable measures that a state government could adopt under normal budgetary circumstances. Please note: “affordable” does not mean cheap or free.

1. Install industrial grade air filters in every classroom: There was an interesting story in 2015 where a natural gas leak caused parents to freak out, which caused the school board to freak out, and to calm them, the gas company agreed to install industrial grade air filters in every classroom in the district. It was an unnecessary but really positive response that resulted in higher educational gains that didn’t fade away the next year (the response was unnecessary because natural gas goes straight up rather than getting around everywhere and leaking into classrooms). Despite the gas not really being an educational problem, it turns out that reducing indoor air pollution in classrooms can improve educational gains in English and Math by roughly the equivalent of cutting classroom sizes by one-third or getting amazing teachers in every classroom. At $1,000 per classroom and roughly 3,000 classrooms in the state, it would cost roughly $3 million to accomplish in a state like Michigan. That’s a lot of money, but the return on investment is high, and it wouldn’t really disrupt anyone’s lives.
2. Later school start times — this one would be A LOT harder to implement. I remember having a vicious argument about this with a friend once (and to be fair, she and I agree on nothing while maintaining a friendship). She was infuriated by the idea of this as everything would have to change from school bus worker shifts to football practice to when teachers get home, and it would affect when parents get to work. I fully admit this is a problem, but this is all hypothetical, and CDC studies show that teenagers really need more sleep than the average adult. Students that have later class start times have higher grades across the board than their peers who start earlier in the morning.
3. Deregulate public schools — I briefly ran a political campaign in 2018, and my candidate and I met with two superintendents. Both superintendents alluded to their political views without saying them, they probably couldn’t say it due to their community roles, but they weren’t exactly subtle either. One was a Democrat, and one was a Republican, and both said the same thing. While extra funding would be awesome, the paperwork required by the state was a burden. Time and money are their most important resources, and they were stretched for both. Much of the paperwork was duplicitous, but they had to do it to keep school funding stable. It seems like a no-brainer that these funding programs could have less paperwork while reporting the same data through the state.
4. Retrofit school buses — this idea is along the same lines as the air filters in classrooms. It turns out that even low levels of air pollution are bad for respiratory diseases, and the same pollution can affect children’s educational outcomes. There is preliminary evidence that air pollution on school buses is quite high, and reducing that pollution improves test scores. Excess carbon monoxide breathed in by kids can cause brain fog the same day that it is taken in. Now, how would that affect the 55% of kids who ride the bus every day? 95% of those buses run on diesel fuel too! Any government level with the funding being available could retrofit old school buses with new air filters and reduce pollutants by 95%.
5. Support foster care kids and boarding schools — children that go through the foster care system do not have good lives. Many end up in jail or prison, get pregnant as teens, and few finish college. They are more likely to not have jobs, go into debt, use welfare programs, which is likely because they are not treated well as children. They are also 3x more likely to drop out of high school. It turns out that treating children poorly, constantly having them switch schools, and not having any mentors or role models can harm a child’s mental health and educational outcomes. Foster children could be easily identified through the state for a more targeted response. Providing them with more stability in life would improve educational outcomes, and the societal benefits would be massive.