Lesson Plan for Education Reform

A study group issues an education plan for keeping the U.S. competitive globally, calling for a radical transformation of American schools

by Jane Porter

With the release of a new report Dec. 14 on the future of the U.S. educational system, the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce has created a controversial blueprint for school reform that it says is crucial if the U.S. is to maintain its competitiveness. With India and China churning out highly skilled, low-cost workers, the group says the U.S. must train the next generation of college graduates to produce the next big wave of money-making ideas. If it can be done at all, it will take 15 years and cost billions in new and reallocated funds, but the U.S. has no choice, according to the report. "There is a real sense of urgency at this point," says Caroline Hoxby, Harvard economist and director for the National Bureau of Economic Research's Economics of Education Program. "We don't have any time to waste."

If implemented, the commission's recommendations—signed by 26 members from all corners of the corporate, nonprofit, education, and political worlds—would revolutionize the way children are educated in this country. Among the ideas: a set of Board Examinations allowing all 10th graders to place into college; improved compensation and incentives to attract better quality teachers; an overhaul of the American testing industry; contract-run schools instead of schools run by school boards; improved education for all three- and four-year-olds; standards for state-run funding instead of local funding; legislation for continued education for adults; a new GI Bill; and regionally focused job training.

Staying Ahead

Skeptics question the new testing proposal, the dangers of state-regulated standards supporting an inadvertently top-down system and the actual feasibility and effect such changes would have in a global context. Iris Rotberg, research professor of education policy at George Washington University, who has examined education reform across 16 countries, says the country's problems are not unique. "The fact is we are all struggling with pretty much the same problems, including an achievement gap based on socioeconomic status," she says, noting that countries in Europe and Asia face similar dilemmas.

But if experts in the field of education don't agree with one of the commission's recommendations, they are likely to agree with a slew of others. Educators agree that the report will serve as a necessary tool for policy makers thinking about future education reform. How feasible all of the 10 recommendations will be—considering the strong interest groups that would resist such a radical rethinking of American education—is at this point not entirely clear. But economists and scholars would agree that the report does a better job than any other attempt so far at re-envisioning an education system that produces the kinds of entrepreneurial thinkers the U.S. needs to stay afloat in a global market.

The commission is not just concerned with keeping up, but with staying ahead globally. This is not the first time the commission has come together to offer a reexamination of the education system. In 1990, the group released a report, America's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages, that recommended focusing on high-skill labor and allowing low-skill work to go to the countries with the lowest wages. Its impact spanned federal legislation from the National Skill Standards Board Act, to the Workforce Investment Act, to the Goals 2000 Act that established higher education standards.

Autonomy

Today the global market paints a very different picture. With China and India producing highly skilled engineers who work for a fraction of the cost of their American counterparts, combined with the rampant outsourcing of labor, the American middle class is gradually shrinking and the standard of living is at risk. An engineer making $45,000 in the U.S. can easily be replaced by one in India making $7,500 a year (see BusinessWeek.com, 11/15/06, "Keeping America Competitive").