"The education system is merely a support for the
political system we choose." - Vicky Davis
In 2007 the National
Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) produced a report entitled
Tough Choices or Tough Times. In it, they outlined a view for the American education system as the supplier of workers for the 21st century in a global economy. From her blog
Channeling Reality, Davis summarizes the the findings of the report below:
Problems in
the Current System
- Teachers are recruited from
the lower strata of the intellectual talent pool
- Waste in the system,
allowing students to fail in lower grades and
paying for remediation in later years when costs
are higher
- System is inherently
inefficient. “Standards have helped but only
moderately relative to cost” over 30 years
- Growing inequality in family
income as a contributing factor in growing
disparities in student achievement
- Failure to motivate students
to achieve
- Teacher compensation rewards
longevity rather than performance
- Testing system measures rote
learning and does not measure creativity,
innovative thinking, and analytical abilities
- People who have the
responsibility for education do not have the
power. Power is in the hands of those who do not
have the responsibility.
- Students must be prepared to
continue learning for their lifetimes because of
the tumultuous nature of the global economy.
- Education system must be
changed to allow adults to continue education and
training throughout their lifetimes for the same
reason stated above.
Proposed
Changes
- Reduce secondary education
to age 16 (10th grade) at which time, a
board examination is given and a decision is made
regarding the path of the student - college prep,
or vocation. Board examination is on a syllabus
provided by the Board. Implicit in the
description is that students could choose to end
their educational stint at this point
theoretically without penalty later in life.
Guarantees for higher education for good
performance in lower grades.
- The reduction of school
years will save $60 billion annually to be divided
as follows:
- Recruiting
teachers from the top strata of the
intellectual talent pool and paying them
according to private sector standards
- Establishing
“full-service” preschools for 3 and 4
year olds for early childhood education
and social-health services.
- Increasing
resources for “disadvantaged students”
to allow them to succeed to
international standards
- Change teacher compensation
from a backloaded system of pension and health
benefits to cash up front with a benefit structure
the same as the private sector (i.e. 401k’s).
Proposed teacher pay would increase to a median
$95,000 for a beginning teacher in a system the
same as the current system - moving up to $110,000
for a teacher willing to work the same schedule
and hours as a private sector professional.
- Privatization of the schools
(Management Contract Schools) while continuing
public funding. State maintenance of a licensed
teacher registry from which the Contract schools
could hire teachers. The teachers would be state
employees and would be paid by the state - but
would be managed by the school management
contractors.
- Current requirements for
teachers would be scrapped. States would create a
new agency (Teacher Development Agency) to develop
teachers - charged with recruiting, training and
certifying teachers. They would also be
responsible for maintaining a registry of
certified, licensed teachers.
- Develop standards,
assessments and curriculum that reflect today’s
needs and tomorrow’s requirements. Set standards
with corresponding assessments and then develop
curriculum to meet those standards.
- Eliminate local school board
ownership of schools. Unstated - but de facto
sell the schools to the Contract Management
groups. Local school boards would become data
collectors for the state (essentially IT
operations) and the case managers for social
services (i.e. medical, mental, etc) to students
and parents of students - BUT… schools would be
free to contract for services elsewhere if they so
choose.
- Create “high performance”
schools. “High Performance” is a code phrase that
has a very specific meaning that is too long to
describe here. Essentially, it is schools that
are oriented towards a system of supply chain
management to produce workers as opposed to an
education system for citizens with work being a
secondary or peripheral goal.
- Schools would be funded
according to a per-pupil, weighted formula with
the discretion for how the funds are expended
being given to the Contract managers as long as
the Contractors meet the standards for
performance.
- Schools would be required to
be affiliated with a “helping organization” -
profit or non-profit. Presumably this means
Foundations like the Bill Gates Foundation or the
Carnegie Foundation - which have become front
organizations to promote and integrate the UNESCO
social agenda into the school curriculum.
- Universal preschool with
social services for 3 and 4 year-olds.
- State level-funding on a per
pupil basis to eliminate the quality differences
between wealthy districts and poor districts. And
of course…. Mo Money… $19 billion additional as an
estimate.
- All-inclusive social
services including funds to screen and diagnose
students for their medical, dental, optical,
audiological, mental health services. Tutors,
counselors and mentors will be provided. Schools
will be open from early morning till late at night
to serve the needs of students outside of
classroom requirements. They state that this
proposal applies to “disadvantaged” students but
it would have to be available in all schools
because by definition, the schools are public and
they take all comers.
- Create personal education
accounts for each child when born with a $500
government credit with additional amounts added
over time. Additional amounts could be added over
time by basically anybody - government,
individuals through salary deductions, parents,
the state, etc.
- Create regional
competitiveness authorities. The regional
authority would be responsible to coordinate and
plan the educational programs for children to
correspond with the economic development of the
communities within the region. Noteworthy
clarification on these authorities:
“We settled
on the word “authorities” to describe these new bodies
because we wanted to convey the idea that they need to be
more than debating societies. They need to be able to raise
and spend money needed to
develop their regions over time. If these new bodies
are as successful as we think they will be, the federal
government should consider lifting many of the restrictions
on the separate programs they will administer and permitting
them to combine the funds from these programs in ways that
are more likely to lead to both strong economic growth and
strong job growth, especially for the most vulnerable people
in the country."
Synthesis
The underlying message in this report
is a threat - either change the education system or your
economy will be destroyed by global competition. The
logical fallacy is that there is nothing in the plan that
changes the fact that an engineer in India makes $7,500 per
year and an American engineer makes $45,000 per year.
Equilibrium in wages will never be reached because of the
population differences. What they are attempting to do is
to manage our decline in wage and living standards by
holding out the hope that somehow the education system will
fix a structurally flawed economic system.
The idea behind the “regional
competitiveness authority” is to establish planners for the
economy of the region coupled with the planning of the
workforce training to correspond to the planned economic
activity. Central planning of the economy and workforce is
the hallmark of the communist system. There is no way to
weasel around the fact that this proposal for ‘education
reform’ is a major step towards the ‘transformation’ of the
United States to a communist system. Our capitalist
economic system has morphed into a communist political
system and the education reforms are designed to support
that political system.
The amount of money they are promising
for teacher salaries is absurd. It’s bribery to get the
buy-in from teachers for the plan. It’s simply not going to
happen. The funding for the schools will be on a per-pupil
formula with the Contract Managers being able to spend the
money in whatever way they choose. It’s a sure bet that
they will choose not to spend the money on teachers but
rather, the money will be spent on software and technology
to replace teachers. Furthermore, in a system of global
competition and ‘free trade’, teachers can be imported who
will work for much less money than is currently being paid
today - let alone the outrageous salaries stated in the
report. It is fundamentally dishonest to imply that somehow
teachers will be exempt from low wage, imported competition
for jobs. The teachers who are selected to be the Contract
Managers of the schools will be highly paid for sure, but
they will simply be ‘fronts’ for the real management of the
schools which will be the “helping organizations”.
The report mentions “high performance
schools” but does not elaborate on what that means.
Obviously the hope is that decision makers will assume the
plain meaning of the phrase but that would be a wrong
assumption. The term “high performance schools” comes from
a Labor Department document titled, “Learning a Living”.
When that term is used, they are talking about vocational
training in schools beginning with pre-K through the end -
whether that’s grade 10 or 12. The entire curriculum is
skills based, work-focused. Assignments emphasize
work-oriented lessons. In other words, it is a skills
training system for workers as opposed to an academically
oriented educational system to develop well-rounded citizens
with a 21st century knowledge base.
The emphasis in the report aims high -
college for all, extra resources for the “disadvantaged”,
more math, science, literature, the arts and technology, but
that picture is completely at odds with the realities of a
global economy dominated by multinational corporations. The
reality is that there will be few opportunities for good
jobs in the global economic system and it will be a buyer’s
market with corporations shopping for the highest quality,
least cost employees from the global pool of available and
desperate workers.
This report says that the goal is to
produce workers who are creative and innovative but those
qualities can’t be taught in a school. That’s a fundamental
mistake that all communist countries have made. Those
qualities emerge in individuals when the economic system
provides the opportunities for individuals to make his or
her ideas and dreams a reality. In a global economy
dominated by multinationals with central planners for the
regional economies and “high performance” (vocational
schools), the weight of the infrastructure is too great and
the risks to future earnings will inhibit innovation and
creativity. In a planned economic system, kowtowing to the
regional authorities is the way to get ahead - not
initiative.
Although unstated, this plan attempts
to nationalize the curriculum through the imposition of
standards and assessments. By definition the goal of
standards is to produce cookie cutter results. When a
corporation produces a product like cookies, standards are
very important to produce uniform results. Since it is not
possible to produce uniform results with people, the system
of “assessments” is being implemented to compensate for over
and under achievement and abilities to give the appearance
of a uniform product (person). Assessments are not
objective measurements of accomplishment. They are
subjective measurements that include the degree of
acceptance of social conditioning, personal characteristics
and work habits, and attitude. A smart kid who sees through
this system for what it is and rebels could potentially have
his life ruined forever by the power of the “assessment” to
override academic achievement and inherent abilities. In
the world of uniformity that this system is designed to
create, a rebel is an unwelcome intrusion - not a gem in the
rough.
Clearly, the education system must
change. Our economy will no longer support the expensive,
labor-intensive, bureaucratic system we have today that
doesn’t produce the desired result of educated people. But
the tough choice that America must make is not the education
system but the political system we want to leave as our
legacy for future generations. The decisions made on the
education system will simply solidify the decision on the
political system.
We have come a long way towards this vision with almost no input from the public who is supplying the "capital" for this economic system. Isn't it time we had the discussion about which political system we want our education system to support?
