Thanks to the emailer for this post from the Sunday Parade Magazine. Take a look at that last Q&A. It's far more complex than the Emperor thinks it is.
Website for the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce
Executive Summary of the report PDF format, 26 pages
Power Point presentation (PDF format only)
The first Commission Report (June 1990), PDF format, 164 pages
Fixing Our Schools
Former Labor Secretary William Brock leads the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, created to report on the state of U.S. education.
How can we fix American education?
First, we have to agree that we have a problem. In the last 25 years, spending has risen 240% while performance has barely changed. Only 68% of students graduate from high school, and many states require only eighth-grade skills in reading and math to get a diploma. We need to start with better early-childhood education. We need the very best among us to become teachers, and we need to ensure that standardized tests of rote knowledge don’t drive education away from the very things that have made America special: critical thinking, creativity, innovation, and teamwork.
You’ve said publicly that we are failing our teachers. How?
We recruit new teachers largely from the bottom 30% of entering college students, train them, and then assign them to the toughest jobs in the most challenging schools with very low pay. When the results fall short, we tell them, “You just have to work harder.” Most feel that they have no voice in their schools. This is no way to treat professionals.
Why isn’t education a bigger political issue?
Primarily because there is no quick fix. It’s complex. Perhaps most of all, no one really wants to admit that we are leaving millions of children behind. Education is the key to better jobs, higher incomes, and greater growth in what has become an extremely competitive global economy. Nothing is more important than education. Absolutely nothing.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
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1 comment:
This is a really interesting read.
It does not address how we could make such drastic changes (i.e. how do you convince the unions to change from a seniority-based to a merit-based system? how do you convince the people to pay our teachers MORE? (ah, now I have your attention Morrisvlle!). Nevertheless the ideas are good ones.
Perhaps the most important point in this is that we need to be more than book-smart, we need to be smart/creative/innovative because all routine jobs can (and will someday) be automated or performed on-the-cheap on the world market.
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