Stimulate Profound Learning Outcomes

What recommendation would you give the President if he asked for your views on how best to energize our economy? I'm assuming The Big O has all the time in the world, and does in fact read this blog! So here goes, starting with the program musts:

• Must have an immediate impact
• Must be something that has a pre-defined and fixed end
• The economy must continue to flow and remain energetic once the stimulus stops
• It can not be something that ought to be in the budget anyway (i.e. investments that should be sustained over time)
• It must have the effect of being inspiring as well as provoke optimism and a belief that it's not time to "hunker down" and save for a rainy day
• It should not be prone to abuse and fraud

I've written recently about the stimulus package here and here, and then before that had written about two ideas that I'd come up with on the mortgage crisis and then about Detroit Big Three. I still like these, and they fit the criteria.

What about tax-related approaches? A lot of attention goes towards cuts or rebates - and I was generally skeptical about that, but then read this and this, and wondered if I was wrong. Digging a bit deeper, I found this and this. Conclusion: there is no conclusive evidence that a tax cut or rebate will create a positive stimulus to the economy.

But - are we over-thinking this? What's the one thing people are most worried about right now? The one thing that makes them want to save and not spend? The one thing that creates the fear of "what happens tomorrow?" Unemployment - if you feel like your job is here to stay, that your cash flow is predictable, then I think spending will follow, and economic vibrancy is the result. How do we create meaningful, sustainable jobs without bloating the government?

Combining my recent post on the learnings from Japan, where the greatest ROI from their stimuli was from Education investments (174% growth), with this post from Eduwonk, which pointed to this excellent analysis correlating jobs at risk with education level, and now add this entry I wrote last year called Redefining Learning. It suggests that the earlier children are engaged in learning, the better. It also says that teacher-to-student ratios should be highest in early years - from age zero to ten or twelve, and then go down from there. And, we know that investing in Education is goodness all around.

Based on all of this, we should:

1. Redefine public school-eligible ages to begin from the second year (age 1+) through to the eighteenth year (age 17+)
2. Specify teacher-to-student ratios going from 5:1 to 30:1, growing with the students' age
3. Redefine curriculum and assessment standards based on existing research
4. Establish teacher qualification standards and certify teachers colleges
5. Determine the physical classroom and teacher capacity that will be required to service our population 25 years out; this will feed into post-secondary requirements as well

The stimulus package should:

1. Construct new schools **all physical assets in schools should be federalized - they own, provision and maintain all public schools in the country **
2. Expand Teachers' College capacity to accommodate new teacher requirements for the next 25 years
3. Develop a national curriculum with corresponding assessment standards
4. The States (who now don't own and maintain the schools) will hire the new teachers and staff
5. The Stimulus will bump up State funding for staffing
6. The Feds will commit to maintaining schools and State education funding through budget cycles

Implications

Daycare centers will be redundant, but all these jobs just transfer to the new model. Parents of young children will find their "operating costs" are lowered dramatically as the public system covers what was daycare, they will have the time to at least get part-time jobs, and their ability to make ends meet should improve. There will be a surge in employment for construction (which will taper off over time), teachers colleges will grow, we will lower unemployment, and of course the ranks of teachers will double (3 million additional jobs), adding tremendously to the goodness of our country and our children.

What are we waiting for?