 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Find more Kappan articles in the
JUST A few years ago, when Thomas Friedman published The World Is Flat, I rushed to give it a read. And, like hundreds of thousands of people around the planet, I found it riveting. His description of a world transformed by the Internet, globalization, and new ways of doing business seemed like a revelation. Yet, as I wrote in a review of the book for Education Next, I became crestfallen when I reached his conclusions about the nation's schools. Surely, I thought, Friedman would argue that competition would have the same positive, transformative effects on our education system as the liberalization of India's economy has had on its development. Without a doubt, I thought, he would compare our schools' stultifying unions to those of Europe, whose labor markets he derides as "inflexible, rigidly regulated . . . full of government restrictions on hiring and firing." Absolutely, I was convinced, he would look at this new flat world, where Americans must compete with people not from their own community or state but from all over the planet, and declare our patchwork education system -- with its 50 sets of academic standards and tests -- no longer up to the challenges at hand. The time has come, he would say, for rigorous national standards and tests, political obstacles be damned. Alas, Friedman merely offered a handful of underwhelming suggestions regarding math and science teaching and making college more affordable. What a letdown! Thankfully, Marc Tucker and the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce picked up where Friedman and The World Is Flat left off. For all of its imperfections (and there are several, as I describe below), its recommendations are as bold as the challenge is big. The New Commission is willing to upset the applecart, challenge long-standing assumptions, and think way outside the box. Not everyone is impressed. Jay Mathews, the Washington Post's estimable education writer, has criticized the group's report because it "ignore[s] reality." Historian and critic Diane Ravitch (who serves as a trustee of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation) calls it "pie-in-the-sky theorizing." I don't agree. The reality is that the world is changing in leaps and bounds; tweaking our education system incrementally is not enough if we want to keep up. And who is in a better position to communicate a compelling (if politically difficult) vision than a blue-ribbon panel? The New Commission's smartest ideas revolve around recruiting and retaining talented young teachers. Its report states a simple truth that today's education system would rather ignore: "More and more, the brightest and most able college graduates [are] not interested in committing themselves to lifetime careers." In an economy that is constantly churning, young employees expect challenge and opportunity, not stability and predictability. Our task in education, then, is not to replace the baby boomers with another generation of teachers who will spend 30 underpaid years in a bureaucratic system before retiring with full benefits. Few young teachers will sign up for that deal. No, our challenge is to recruit talented people into teaching; get them up to speed quickly through rigorous preparation, on-the-job training, and meaningful support; and try to hold onto them for 10 years instead of five or 15 years instead of 10 -- all the while maximizing their effectiveness in the classroom. So how do we do that? Mr. Tucker suggests by making starting salaries more competitive; by offering bonuses for high performance, specialized skills, or the willingness to take on tough assignments; by making our schools less hierarchical and bureaucratic; and by funding retirement accounts that are portable and flexible. In other words, by treating young teachers as we treat other young professionals in the information economy. Another solid idea of the New Commission's is to encourage a sizable proportion of teenagers to exit the K-12 system early. This notion springs from the insight that high school can no longer be the terminus of anyone's education; to have a shot at succeeding in the 21st-century economy, individuals need at least some college-level skills. That reality changes the equation for high school reform. Rather than ask how schools can keep students from dropping out and give them all the knowledge and skills they need to survive in the economy (a task not nearly accomplished even when the economy was less competitive), we ought to ask how high schools can prepare students for the next phase in their education and speed them on their way. Under the New Commission's plan, most students would pass a test at age 16 and head off to a community or technical college. Those who demonstrated high potential would participate in rigorous high school programs like the International Baccalaureate (IB), then apply to selective four-year colleges and universities. Those who failed the test at 16 would get extra help until they passed it and would then move ahead to further education. The benefits of this approach are myriad. For the majority of adolescents, it would equate to a "get out of jail free" card, liberating them from the boredom, irrelevance, and claustrophobic structure of the American high school. Community colleges -- most of which possess an entrepreneurial gene unknown to the K-12 system -- would have lots of incentives to meet the needs of these young learners and engage their minds. Those students who did well in the community colleges would continue on to a four-year college. Their peers who stayed behind and participated in IB programs and the like in their junior and senior years of high school would be immersed in achievement-oriented cultures, free of classmates who would rather not be there. And struggling students who needed remedial help would get it. It's a compelling vision. Still, it's easy to understand why the proposals of the New Commission have been misinterpreted as creating a massive tracking system. By celebrating the examination systems found in other advanced nations (where, according to the report, most students have risen "to meet the expectations set by the examinations, because they understood that that was the only way they could achieve their aims"), the recommendations bring to mind the kind of high-stakes, life-defining test that most Americans find abhorrent. After all, America is the land of second and third and fourth chances; we want strict assurances that our kid isn't going to be confined to sweeping streets because he flubbed a single test. To its credit, the New Commission tries to provide those assurances. It insists, "Not passing [the examination] does not consign a student to a life of struggle. In fact, the idea [is] to organize the system with the aim of sending every student to college and, at the same time, making sure that every student [has] the skills to succeed in college once there." But the New Commission hurts its case by not paying enough attention to the fundamental changes that will need to take place from kindergarten onward if most students are to be ready for a community college by the end of 10th grade. Sure, providing high-quality preschool to everybody (especially low-income children) would go a long way. And yes, recruiting better teachers could dramatically improve the quality of instruction in the nation's schools. But left out of the equation, except in passing, is the most basic of basics: the curriculum. If 16-year-olds are to possess a broad liberal arts education covering "all the core subjects in the curriculum," then grades K-8 are going to need to be completely rethought, too. The reason is that, by all accounts, the curriculum in many elementary and middle schools is being stripped of most content. Squeezed by No Child Left Behind's demands to raise reading and math scores and shunned by constructivists who refuse to deem any particular knowledge more valuable than any other, a broad common curriculum rich with literature and science and history and the arts is eroding. This trend is especially pronounced in schools with a concentrated population of minority students, where reading and math blocks now dominate, and everything else is deemed expendable. The New Commission is right to want all 16-year-olds to be broadly and liberally educated, but its recommendations fall far short of providing a road map for making that happen. In addition, for all of their ambition for redesigning our education system, Marc Tucker and the New Commission are strangely humble when it comes to our students' potential. Should we settle for their goal of 20% or so of our students staying in rigorous high school programs and going on to selective colleges -- the places most likely to spark the creativity and innovation the New Commission says are so in demand in today's economy? Why not aim to double or triple that number, both by raising standards in the elementary/secondary system and by creating additional capacity in selective institutions at the tertiary level? Such an objective would be more than inspirational; it would be a good-faith indication that the New Commission's recommendations aren't an excuse to keep sorting students (and citizens) into winners and losers. No, this New Commission hasn't figured out the magic solution for fixing our ailing schools. (Of course, there is no magic solution.) But its ideas -- especially those affecting teacher compensation and high school reform -- are at least worth taking seriously, trying out in a few places, learning from, and improving upon. That's not the all-or-nothing approach the members of the New Commission might prefer, but it would take us closer to a day when, for all Americans, the "flatness" of the world won't inspire fear, but rather hope and opportunity. |
|
|
