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Discover the global educational achievements surpassing the US, the need for skill improvement, and how top-performing systems can lead the way.
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Why Not The Best? June 6, 2019
Did you know… • In more than ten countries in the world, the average student graduates high school more than 2 years ahead of our average student. • When our high school graduates leave for college, the majority are admitted to what would be a high school program in many top-performing countries.
Did you know… • Over the last 50 years, the performance of U.S. high school students in mathematics and reading as measured by NAEP has not improved at all. • While the United States has been standing still, one nation after another has surpassed us in both the quantity and quality of education they provide to their young people.
Did you know… • Students in more than 30 countries outperform ours in mathematics. • Fifty years ago, the U.S. had the best-educated workforce in the industrialized world. • Today, the millennials in our workforce are tied for the lowest level of basic skills of all workers in the industrialized countries tested by the OECD.
Why this matters…Globalization • Many countries with much lower wages are educating their students to the same level many of our students are educated to. • The only way our workers can compete with them now is to lower their wages to that of the low-wage competition.
Why this matters…Automation • Some say that low-skill American workers’ wages should be raised. • But half the jobs in the American economy can be done by technology available today. • If wages for low-skill jobs go up, many of those jobs will be done by robots.
The only solution… • Raise all our workers’ skills to world-class levels, leaving most of the low-skill work to machines and workers in other countries. • That will require our schools to educate all our students to levels we have only educated our elites to in the past. • That is just what the countries with the best education systems are doing now.
The problem is not our educators THE PROBLEM IS THE SYSTEM THEY WORK IN
We have a system designed for a smokestack economy • The top-performing countries have been building systems designed for a high-tech global economy. • To compete, to provide a rewarding future for our people, we have to match the achievements of the top performers.
If we want to catch up to the leaders... Study the top-performing systems Figure out how they have gotten so far ahead of us NCEE has been doing that for more than 30 years
Six years ago… NCEE was asked by NCSL to staff a group of state legislators tasked with studying the countries with the best education systems. The report we helped them write – No Time to Lose – was the most widely read report on education NCSL has ever issued.
Three years ago… Inspired by the NCSL report, the State of Maryland asked NCEE to assist a new state Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education. It had been charged with revising the state’s school funding formulas and proposing policies that would enable the state’s students to achieve at the level of the students with the best education systems in the world.
Maryland did it right… • Got all the right players to the table • Picked first-rate, highly regarded people to lead it • Consulted widely in the state • Reached out to national and international experts for advice • Gave it enough time to work toward a consensus few had believed possible
Designing a high-performance system is complicated… • American education systems are collections of “silver-bullet” solutions. • Policies don’t fit together, often work at cross purposes and many are short-term fixes.
High-performance system design… Fitting the pieces together— Four examples underlying the Commission’s Plan: • Supports for the Youngest Children • High-quality and Diverse Teachers and Leaders • College and Career Readiness Pathways • More Resources to Ensure All Students are Successful
An effective SYSTEM:Supports for the youngest children • The top performers spend only 80% of what U.S. schools spend on average per student and get much better results. • Why? Because they invest far more in families with young children than we do—pre-natal care, nutritional aid, income support, family leave, child care, early childhood education.
An effective SYSTEM:Supports for the youngest children • The Commission could not change income distribution in Maryland, abolish concentrated poverty in its cities and rural areas or change housing policy. • But nothing it did about school policy would enable Maryland’s poor and minority children to catch up to the children in the top-performing countries unless it found a way to deal with the conditions under which many Maryland children live.
An effective SYSTEM:Supports for the youngest children • Observers have noted that the effects of early childhood education and other services provided to low-income students often wear off after a few years in school. The experience of the top performers is that these children need extra help—from tutoring to wrap-around services—once they are in school, as well as before they arrive in first grade to succeed at the levels the Commission saw them achieving in the top-performing countries. • These services have to be seamless and encompassing—from birth to high school graduation.
An effective SYSTEM: High-quality and diverse teachers and leaders • The Commission found out that all the top performers have worked hard to make sure that teaching is a very attractive career for high school graduates who have a wide choice of professional career options and all their schools are staffed with highly capable teachers. • But it also found out that not enough Maryland high school students want to become teachers to produce enough teachers for Maryland schools at any quality level. Applications to Maryland teachers colleges are plummeting.
An effective SYSTEM: High-quality and diverse teachers and leaders • The Commission realized that teachers colleges could raise their admissions standards, but if the districts did not raise teachers’ pay, all that would do is shut off the supply of applicants to a trickle. • Districts could raise pay, but if the teachers colleges don’t raise their standards, all that would do is increase the cost of the quality of teachers they can now get for what they are currently paying. • Both the districts and the teachers colleges would have to act together.
An effective SYSTEM: High-quality and diverse teachers and leaders • But the top performers did not get where they are until they raised university admissions requirements, modernized preparation, tightened licensing standards, increased pay and redesigned the job. • All these things needed to be done together, and implemented in the right order.
An effective SYSTEM: College and career readiness pathways • The Commission shared your dream—many more students getting into selective colleges, students leaving high school with an Associate’s Degree ready to start their junior year in college, students leaving high school to start work with strong technical skills leading to a rewarding career which is pretty much what happens in the top-performing countries—but how to do it?
An effective SYSTEM: College and career readiness pathways • Here’s what has to fit together to make it happen: • Set a new College and Career Ready standard, not for graduation, but for the end of the sophomore year in high school. • Structure a step-by-step curriculum framework to get students there from 1st grade.
An effective SYSTEM: College and career readiness pathways • Provide strong curriculum supports for students who need them for every subject in every grade. • Create a system to make sure that students who are falling behind get the help they need immediately.
An effective SYSTEM: College and career readiness pathways • Train the teachers how to teach the curriculum, identify students who are falling behind, diagnose the problems they are having and fix those problems. • Make sure the school has access to the extra resources it needs—more teachers, tutors, access to coordinated social services—to address the problems that many students face.
An effective SYSTEM: College and career readiness pathways • This only works when planned for and tightly coordinated over a period of years.
An effective SYSTEM: More resources to ensure all students are successful • Until now, school finance formulas were only used to distribute money to districts, which were then largely free to use that money as they wished. • The previous school finance bill, on which this plan is based, provided a lot of additional funding to Maryland schools, but the changes in policy and practice recommended by the Thornton Commission were not implemented and there was little improvement in student performance.
An effective SYSTEM • Before this meeting is over, Chairman Kirwan will share with you the Commission’s plan, unprecedented in state government anywhere in the United States, for making sure that the strategies recommended by the Commission, strategies based on those used by the top-performing nations, are fully implemented by all Maryland state and local agencies.
As the meeting unfolds, you will get… • A national and international perspective on the Maryland plan; • A description of the design from the leaders of the Commission; • Reactions to the design from key Maryland players; and • A chance to ask questions of the presenters.
My heartfelt thanks to… • The State of Maryland for inviting NCEE to help; • Betsy Brown Ruzzi, my companion in arms in this and many other enterprises, who drove our Maryland effort every day with skill and dedication; and • The other members of our remarkable Maryland team: Jackie Kraemer, Nathan Driskell, Gretchen Cheney, Jennifer Craw and Monica Pfister.
And a salute to… • William “Brit” Kirwan and Rachel Hise • This remarkable report is almost entirely the result of the extraordinary leadership of Brit, whose patience, skill and integrity carried the day and Rachel, his right and left hand, both of whom will get a more formal introduction in a moment.
One last word… • In 1990 the Kentucky Education Reform Act moved that state from the bottom of the national rankings to the middle. • In 1993 the Massachusetts Reform Act moved that state into the top of the international rankings, but did not reduce the gap.
One last word… • The Maryland Interim Report is poised to move that state into the top of the international rankings and significantly close the gap. • What has been called “the education reform movement” has not moved the needle.
One last word… The Maryland plan, if implemented nationwide, could do what the “education reform movement” has not been able to do—give the United States, once again, the best-educated workforce in the world.
