One of the goals of Seattle Works is to inspire. As a board member, I often find that inspiration at our monthly meetings. On September 15th, we had a visit from Scott Oki who spoke to us about his current projects and his efforts to improve public education.
Scott Oki is a former senior-vice president of Microsoft who helped develop their international operations. Since leaving Microsoft in 1992, he has been involved some amazing efforts in the community. He has served on dozens of advisory boards for both for-profit and non-profit companies. He also runs the Oki Foundation which tackles many societal issues.
Initially, he talked about a new social entrepreneurship idea that is geared to bringing donors closer to the people that they help. This effort focuses on people who are willing to donate small amounts of money to help those in need around the world. With basic technology such as camera phones and free Web 2.0 cloud based services, this new organization will help donors see the impact of their contribution and build an emotional connection with the people being helped in developing nations. By combining this effort with social media networks, Scott talked about the tremendous viral potential of this strategy.
After that, he focused on his research on public education. I was alarmed to learn about the following issues in the American school systems:
- There are more non-teachers than teachers on the payroll of school districts
- A large number of teachers have tenure which makes them impossible to fire even when they are ineffective
- It’s difficult to reward insanely great teachers due to unions
- Children are often socially promoted to the next grade instead of earning the right by merit. This hurts the entire class as the educator must babysit instead of teach
- Parents have no choice in where to send their children even if they know the school is awful
- Standardized curriculums and testing have taken the creativity out of the classroom as teachers are encouraged to teach to a test instead of to the subject
The sense of outrage in the room was palpable. Scott then talked about his recent book and his ideas to reform the educational system. The name of the book is Outrageous Learning: An Education Manifesto and it is available on Amazon. I’ve had a chance to read it and it is brilliant.
The mark of a great speaker is the amount of discussion that happens after their ideas settle into the audience. After Scott left, the board talked about his ideas and the impacts of the educational crisis on our generation. Some of my closest friends who teach in our public school systems have been laid off recently; these are people who I would consider “insanely great”. Several other board members mentioned this as well. We also talked about how the WASL and the “No Child Left Behind” act have affected local school districts. We also asked ourselves if radical change was possible or even necessary.
I’m always impressed with the diverse experiences and opinions of our board members. The inspiring session with Scott Oki was a great break from the tactical work around Seattle Works events and budget.
Break’s over. SWANK is coming up fast! Looking forward to another amazing auction night on October 10th!