Education Policy

A recent article in The Economist magazine asks the question: Why, in a country like the United States where the storied work ethic is so valued, do American children work so little in school? On average, the American school year is 180 days. In OECD countries the average is 195; in Asia, more than 200. German children spend 20 days more in school than those in the U.S.; South Korean children more than 30 days more. Over 12 years of school, this works out to an additional year of school compared to the United States. This is not only a waste of time, but a waste of infrastructure if one considers the billions we spend each year on school facilities that sit idle four months of the year.

The Economist article goes on to note that American school days are shorter as well: 32 hours per week, on average, compared to 37 hours per week in Luxembourg, 44 hours in Belgium, 53 in Denmark and 60 hours per week in Sweden. Add to this that American school children do on average an hour’s worth of homework a day, whereas Japanese and Chinese children have more than three times that amount.

In 1983, the U.S. Department of Education released “A Nation At Risk,” a report on the state of U.S. education. Written by the professional educators and business people that comprised the commission, the report reads, in part, “Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world…the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very nature as a nation and a people. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur – others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments…If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”

Eighteen years later, the Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, co-chaired by former senators Gary Hart (D) and Warren Rudman (R), issued a report early in 2001 which stated that after a terrorist detonation of a weapon of mass destruction in the United States, the second most serious national security challenge facing us is our inadequate educational system; more serious than any conceivable conventional war.

My friend, Bob Compton, has produced a movie called Two Million Minutes (which equates to four years of high school) in which he features the school and study lives of two American high school students from a top-10 high school, two Indian students and two Chinese students. When it is finished, you understand the daunting task before us: we are in real trouble.

On his website (www.2mminutes.com), Bob has a simplified version of the multi-day exit exam for 10th graders in India (which is done in English – as is all education in India), an exam they must pass if they are to continue on the academic track and then on to college. Bob told me recently that nearly 5,000 people have taken his version of the test online (which is multiple choice; it is a written exam in India) and only one has passed – and he was Indian. By 10th grade in India, students have completed four years each of physics, literature, history, life sciences, geography – all taught by those who majored in these subjects, not by education majors.

Think of it this way: If our Olympic teams scored as they did in the 1950s or 1960s and won no medals it would be a national scandal. There would be TV specials lamenting the plight of sports in America. Coaches, trainers, athletes and Olympic Committee members would be hauled before Congress to explain themselves. Comparing our educational system to the rest of the industrialized world, one could say that we are aggressively preparing to compete in the 1956 Olympics – none of those scores will win medals in 2009.

We have evidence of what works to turn this around. We need only look to, replicate and implement successful models that incentivize students, teachers and parents to work together to rescue the educational systems that entrenched bureaucracies and calcified unions have destroyed. In cities and counties all across the United States, these aloof education bureaucrats and union officials have trapped both students and teachers in failed systems, while ignoring the demands of parents to improve. They have cultivated political power in local school boards as well as with local and state political leaders, so their entrenched interests are favored, trapping the children in their charge in failed systems.

We need to liberate children, teachers and parents. The types of innovations we need start with things like merit pay; increasing student-teacher ratios; revamping union rules to reward the best teachers; eliminating tenure; establishing measurable performance metrics for teachers; bonuses and incentives for new teachers; establishing community accountability rules for administrators; increasing the number of charter schools; increasing the length of the school year and the school day; increasing teacher pay; and, especially in our poorest areas where those parents with the least amount of education and ability to move to neighborhoods with good schools, provide parents with vouchers to allow them the flexibility to help their children receive a better education by sending them to the school of their choice. This is a moral obligation, for education is the key to a better life.

Liberation of students and teachers means that we should think about scrapping the state curriculum and replace it with strict educational standards that guarantee a certain level of knowledge and comprehensive exit exams, such as those in India, which must be passed to graduate. Teaching in teams, teachers must help students to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible using technology and the Internet to bridge gaps in knowledge and subject expertise. Teachers will therefore become mentors and learning guides rather than giving the same lecture semester after semester. Students will become engaged and active learners rather than passive audience members.

Ask any recent graduate if he or she could have completed high school in three years and almost all of them will answer, “Yes.” What a waste. Rather than consigning students and teachers to this, what if we incentivized them by giving each student who finishes high school in 3 years the equivalent of 85 percent of the fourth year as a scholarship for college, money to start a small business or buy a home; with 5 percent going to the school and 10 percent to the team of teachers that taught the student as a reward for work well done.

What I’ve started to describe are very bold steps. U.S. Education Secretary Arnie Duncan, who came with President Obama from Chicago, has started down the right path by challenging the status quo. Congress allocated $100 billion in federal stimulus money for education, $5 billion of which he has reserved for an incentive program for education innovation. The proof is in the pudding, of course, but Secretary Duncan plans to use the funds to address problems such as good teachers fleeing inner-city schools for the suburbs; doubling the number of charter schools; rewarding talented teachers with bonuses; and incentivizing excellence in math and science teaching to try to attract better teachers in those critical areas. These are all positive steps, but much more needs to be done to get us back to a gold medal in education.

As the “A Nation At Risk” report explained 26 years ago, failure to address the issue of education goes beyond the issues of our economic competitiveness, societal cohesion and national security; it threatens our democracy and survival as a nation.

Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.”