Commission on State of Education in US

A reader pointed out an article to me in the Morning Call (read it here) that was based on a Commission report titled The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce (visit their web site here).

The premise of the report is that radical change must be undertaken to modernize our school systems which have operated in the same way for too long and are not preparing students for today's workforce.

The Executive Summary (read it here in PDF) speaks to the choice of Touch Choices or Tough Times, to emphasize the need for change.

It states:

• The first commission report in 1990 never imagined, "we would end up competing with countries that could offer large numbers of highly educated workers willing to work for low wages. But China and India are doing exactly that. Indeed, it turns out that China and India are only the tip of the iceberg."
• "While our international counterparts are increasingly getting more education, their young people are getting a better education as well. American students and young adults place anywhere from the middle to the bottom of the pack in all three continuing comparative studies of achievement in mathematics, science, and general literacy in the advanced industrial nations.
• It notes that it is more cost effective today to automate what was previously done by workers. Therefore outsourcing is not as big an issue to American workers as automation. AAnd further, that it is not only low skill jobs, but instead any job that involves routine work. "Many good, well-paying, middle-class jobs involve routine work of this kind and are rapidly being automated.
• It is noted that Indian Engineers make $7,500 per year compared to American Engineers with equal qualifications who make $45,000.
• Given these factors, the report sites the need to be creative as the differentiating factor that companies will want and as a result "the key to the good life, in which high levels of education - a very different kind of education than most of us have had - are going to be the only security there is."
• The core problem is that our education and training systems were built for another era, an era in which most workers needed only a rudimentary education....We can get where we must go only by changing the system itself.
  

It states we must face a few facts:

1. we recruit a disproportionate share from among the less able of high school students who go to college.
2. we tolerate an enormous amount of waste in the system failing our students in the early years when the cost of doing the job right is low compared to the cost to remediate it later when they are older at a much higher cost.
3. this inherently inefficient system has gotten progressively more inefficient over time.
4. growing inequality in family incomes is contributing heavily to growing disparities in student achievement.
5. we've failed to motivate our students to take tough courses and work hard, thus missing one of the most important drivers of success in the best-performing nations.
6. our teacher compensation system is designed to reward time in service rather than to attract the best and brightest of our college students and reward the best of our teachers.
7. Too often our testing system rewards students who will be good at routine work, while not providing opportunities for students to display creative and innovate thinking and analysis.
8. we have built a bureacracy in our schools in which except for the superintendent, the people who have the responsibility do not have the power, and the people who have the power do not have the responsibility.
9. most of the people who will be in our workforce are already in it, and if they cannot master the new literacy at a high level, it will not matter what we do in our schools.
10. although we have an elaborate funding mechanism to provide funds to send young people post-secondary we have done a very poor job of making it possible for adults with full time jobs to do the same.

The most important truth is "we do not need new programs, and we need less money than one might think....The problem is not with our educators. It is with the system in which they work."

To resolve this the commission recommends several steps:

1. Assume that we will do the job right the first time. Includes establishing a set of board exams students will take that will indicate when they've learned the curriculum and then the student will move on to "college" level, which could be as early as 10th grade. The college would be a two year technical or community college environment. Those who don't pass the exam will stay in the high school until they do.
2. Make much more efficient use of the available resources. The changes from step 1 are estimated to save $60 billion nationally. That money would be reinvested in recruiting/training/deploying a teaching force derived from the top 1/3 of high school students going on to college. Second, build a high-quality full service early childhood program for ages 3 & 4. Third, give the disadvantaged students the resources they need.
3. Recruite from the top third of the high school graduates going on to college for the next generation of school teachers. For a long time women and minorities who did not have opportunities in other areas, did in the schools and as a result we've had better teachers. Now with more opportunities, not getting them and more of teachers are from the bottom third of the HS students going to college. The way to attract this top third is to radically change the compensation system. First, change retirement benefits and make them comparable to public section (401k instead of pension). Then add to starting pay so national starting salary average would be $45,000 (which is now the median) and the top pay to $95,000 for a regular year and as much as $110,000 to those willing to work same hours as other professionals do. Further, teachers would be employed by the state, not local district, and would be on a statewide salary schedule that would include salary increments for effective teachers, those willing to work in tough urban areas and those in areas where there are shortages.
4. Develop standards, assessments, and curriculum that reflect today's needs and tomorrow's requirements. Need to measure all the qualities being sought, not only the discipline-based knowledge that is currently tested.
5. Create high performance schools and districts everywhere - how the system should be governed, financed, organized, and managed. The teachers would be employees of the state. The schools would be operated by independent contractors run by teachers. The role of the central office would be to write performance contracts with operators, monitor their operations, and decide to renew or cancel contracts accordingly.
6. Provide high-quality, universal early childhood education. This is the 3 & 4 year old centers noted earlier.
7. Give strong support to the students who need it the most.
8. Enable every member of the adult workforce to get the new literacy skills.
9. Create personal competitiveness accounts - a GI Bill for our times.
   
10. Create regional competitiveness authorities to make America competitive.

The report is 28 pages long and alot more detail is included that I could possibly have included here, but I wanted to present the full concept as I don't think you can look at pieces of this whole and 'get it'.

This is fairly radical, but in light of everything that has been discussed here about the schools from the perspective of taxpayers, parents, and teachers, it does seem we are all ready for some form of change when it comes to education.

So what do you think? Overall, specific pieces, additional thoughts and comments?