Who should pay for school?
Some parents choose to pay entirely out of pocket to send their children to private schools which have more flexibility in who they admit and what they teach. Others prefer public schools with no cost out of pocket and strict policies to serve everyone. In the middle, some charters or private schools use taxpayer dollars to support education with fewer requirements from the state. These different funding models and missions have consequences for our kids and our society. To get good educational outcomes, we need to balance the trade-offs. The Meta-Problem Method can help.
Complex problems are often vague and have many possible solutions. The Meta-Problem Method may lead you far away from the dilemma that started your quest. That’s because the method forces you to clarify what you really want and what you are willing to give up. It enables you to compare objectively the possible pathways and their trade offs. It prevents you locking into solutions mode too early and then doubling down on solving a low-yield problem that does not serve your goals as well as the alternatives. At the end of this process, you will have a better understanding of your priorities and how to achieve them.
Steps in the Meta-Problem Method
Dilemma
The high-level issue you are trying to address
Design an educational system that works for all.
Goal
The changes you want to make to address the dilemma. There are usually many options.
Supporting Goals
- Parents can choose high quality education for their kids.
- All children receive a good education.
Other goals could include supporting a variety of different educational needs, high job satisfaction amongst teachers, and minimizing the cost to serve.
Problem Space
The set of problems you could chose to solve to advance your goals, plus the constraints that hold you back.
Example problems
- What school choices should parents have and what should those options cost? Maybe the problem to solve is “What school options should taxpayers support?”
- How can we design a system where all children receive a good education? Maybe the problem to solve is “What flexibility can parents get without sacrificing the education of others?”
There are many other potential problems to solve related to policies for school funding. Each goal has many possible problems we could link to it. Are there other problems linked to these first two goals? Which options come to mind for the other goals?
High-Yield Problems
Sometimes solving one problem helps make progress towards several goals. In this step, we identify these “two-for-the-price-of-one” problems.
Which options will advance more than one goal?
- Voucher programs give parents more freedom to choose a school that fits their family even if they have limited financial resources. However, non-public schools often turn away the most expensive students to educate, putting those students and public schools at a disadvantage if they receive the same per-student allocation as a voucher program.
- Educating as many students as possible through public schools ensures a shared foundation of knowledge, standards and shared values for as many kids as possible, and resources to support learning differences. However, parents with fewer financial resources will have more limited options for their children.
There are many potential solutions that will have varying effects on the set of goals. Which alternatives improve the most important goals? How might the unknown change the right path forward? What other possible solutions are there to address the dilemma?
Problem Selection
Which of the many possible options in the high-yield problem step is the best set to address the dilemma?
- Which solutions make the most sense to upgrade education?
- Which solutions will best address the dilemma?
- Which solutions will deliver the best outcome for the least amount of time, effort and money?
Implement, Learn and Adapt
Check continuously that you are still solving the best problem, as new information emerges.
Observe and learn as you go. As new information reveals itself, check continuously that you’re still solving the right problem.