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When someone asks "How can this problem be solved?", the person usually expects a short answer. But creative solutions often can't be explained in just a few words, or even a few sentences. As a result, non-trivial creative solutions can get neglected, especially in the mass media where sound bites are the norm.
Back about 500 BC, Greeks wondered "How can we improve government?" No one could have answered "We need democracy" because the word democracy didn't exist. After the Greeks invented (in 508 BC) the concept that we call democracy, they called it "equality under the law." Only later was the name democracy created.
As a new idea becomes more familiar to more people, shorter names are typically given to the concept. But when a new idea is first conceived and developed, it usually has no name.
Suppose someone today asks "How can the quality of education be dramatically improved?" It would be easy to give replies such as "We need school choice" or "We need school vouchers" because the ideas of "school choice" and "school vouchers" are familiar concepts with established names. However, neither approach will provide the dramatic improvements that most people want. In contrast, what it will take to solve the education dilemma probably hasn't yet been named.
What will it take to dramatically improve the quality of education? In my opinion, ... well, my ideas won't fit into a single sentence. But here is one key suggestion to illustrate that a new solution can easily fail to fit into a few words: Pay excellent teachers more than above-average teachers, pay above-average teachers more than average teachers, and pay average teachers more than mediocre teachers. This pay scale would convey respect for excellence in teaching (which is now absent because an excellent teacher earns the same as an average teacher who has taught for the same number of years and has taken the same university courses). Such pay for excellence would attract to the teaching profession more of the people who are also capable of becoming respected and well-paid scientists, university professors, lawyers, doctors, business managers, etc. Also, it would more strongly motivate teachers to improve their teaching skills. Better teachers in the classroom result in better education. Who would judge the relative excellence of teachers? The teachers themselves! Each teacher would rank (not grade) the other teachers heshe knows in the school. The principal would also rank the teachers. (There isn't room here for clarifications as to how ranking would be done.) Students and parents would also contribute their opinions, and those results would indirectly, but not directly, affect pay. How would the influence of cliquishness and personal favoritism be reduced? Teachers who give a low ranking to a teacher who is highly ranked by other teachers would themselves get a lower ranking. Also, the more highly ranked a teacher is, the more weight would be given to how heshe ranks other teachers (because a person with a high level of excellence is better able to recognize excellence in other people). Furthermore, one of the characteristics used in the ranking would be the willingness of an excellent teacher to informally mentor other teachers. Wouldn't mediocre teachers oppose such a change? Any teacher would have the option of remaining on the tenure system, enabling the tenure system to be phased out instead of suddenly ended. Why is this approach more promising than the "voucher" or "choice" approaches? Competition among schools without the means to improve weak schools does not parallel the free market competition among businesses where employers pay higher salaries to valued employees, pay lower salaries to less-skilled employees, where there is less concern for the number of years of employment, where employees are sometimes demoted, and where poorly performing businesses go bankrupt or are bought and reorganized (including laying off employees who are overpaid). To put it another way, instead of shifting children to the school buildings where the better teachers happen to be, it is wiser to shift those better teachers into the school buildings nearest where the children live.
Does this lengthy (and incompletely explained) idea have a name? No. It could be called "paying teachers extra for excellence using peer ranking," but that name means nothing to someone who doesn't already know what the idea is. Thus, it would be difficult to convey this idea in only a sentence or two as a response to the question "How can the quality-of-education problem be solved?"
When choosing among possible solutions, resist the temptation to favor ideas that have names and to neglect ideas that are difficult to describe. (Also, don't overcompensate by favoring solutions that require many words to describe.) Instead, judge ideas based on whether they will solve the problem.
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