Believe in People by Charles Koch

Author:Charles Koch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

CELEBRATE SUCCESS …

The second step is to celebrate success. We have to help people see that it’s possible to do better—that they don’t have to settle for what they have now.

The beauty of individualized education is that it’s leaps and bounds better than what’s available at the majority of schools. And yet many people don’t know about it. The best way to fix that is to find what works and get the word out.

When you see a program that gets results, tell your peers about it. When you see your kid or your neighbor’s kid benefiting from a novel educational model, talk to other parents. Call attention to the best efforts however you can, wherever you can.

Celebration also shifts the conversation. So does cooperation. It takes the fire out of the us-versus-them mentality, redirecting the focus toward helping every student. Instead of getting lost in divisive debates, people unite.

One innovator who has united and inspired people is the president of Arizona State University, Michael Crow. When he took the helm, ASU was widely known as a party school.24 The advice he received about how to change that was to cut freshman enrollment in half—as if the only way to improve educational quality is to restrict it to a smaller group of more elite kids. Not on his watch. Instead, he set out to change the school’s performance by giving more, rather than fewer, students a more tailored, varied, and beneficial experience.

This learner-centric approach has been a game-changer for students. Under Michael’s leadership, ASU has embraced online education, giving more students the opportunity to learn outside the classroom setting, which may better fit their needs, schedules, and wallets. ASU also engages high school students, letting them integrate with ASU education at an earlier age, when it’s right for them.

One intriguing project is ASU’s partnership with Starbucks. Starbucks pays for its employees to get a bachelor’s degree through the university’s online programs. This novel approach allows tens of thousands of people nationwide to pursue one of more than 80 degrees—whether or not they remain at Starbucks. It is another important move toward individualization, helping more people get a good education without forcing them into the standardized model.

ASU has now been ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the most innovative university in America for five years straight.25 Since Michael Crow assumed the presidency in 2002, enrollment has increased from 55,000 to 110,000—a 100 percent increase—all while ensuring its student body more closely represents Arizona’s demographics.26 Other schools—and their students, professors, and parents—are taking note. They want to be more like ASU. And ASU is meeting more students where they are by opening branch campuses in cities outside Arizona.

This kind of public demand makes the third and final step possible: action that transforms the institution of education from the bottom up.

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