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Getting Education Right, Right Now

Before he voluntarily resigned from the presidency, George Washington described for Thomas Jefferson his vision of a national university.  He wanted a faculty consisting of luminaries of the Scottish Enlightenment, and to offer students the chance to sit in on congressional debates, “thereby becoming more liberally, and better acquainted with the principles of law and government.”  For Washington, nothing was more important to the future of the country than an educated citizenry.  In a free and democratic society, Washington wrote, “it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.”  (Burns 2004, 119).

Education is one of those foundational elements that touches upon virtually every area of American life. Whatever issue or challenge you’re concerned about, there’s usually a solid argument that education bears on it.  Think that the prevailing Wall Street set must change its reckless ways?  Reforming American business schools could help.  Perturbed by poverty but uneasy about expanding the welfare state? For every dollar we invest in education, we get nearly many more back in reduced welfare rolls.  Want to end crime, clean up the inner cities and reduce health care costs?  Education’s the way.  Feel like our elected officials are not responding to the American people as a whole, but rather to special interests or party loyalists?  The more educated our citizens, the more likely they are to vote and otherwise participate in the political process, which means taking back our democracy from the polarizing elite.

The quality and accessibility of our educational system can literally make or break this country in the 21st century.  If we want to be all that we can, every American — rich, poor and everywhere in between — must have equal access to an affordable high-quality education as a matter of right.  As president Obama has put it, “In the 21st century world where jobs can be shipped wherever there’s an Internet connection, where a child born in Dallas is now competing with a child in New Delhi, where you best job qualification is not what you do, but what you know, education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity and success — it’s a prerequisite for success.”

Unfortunately, we have not been performing up to snuff when it comes to satisfying this prerequisite.  America is lagging way behind on education.  Forty years ago, the United States had the best high school graduation rates in the world.  Now we rank 18th.  1 in 4 American teenagers drop out of high school, and in many inner-city schools the drop out rates are well over 50 percent.  According to the Education Trust, the U.S. is the only industrialized country in which young people are less likely than their parents to graduate from high school.  Of those who stay in high school, only about one third can read and do math at current grade levels.  In high school math, the United States ranks 25th in the world, in science 21th, in reading 15th.  Middle school students in Singapore outperform Americans by three to one.  Meanwhile, a unacceptable gap exists between how well white Americans perform in school, and how well African-American and Hispanic students perform.

To achieve Washington’s vision of a truly enlightened citizenry in the 21st century, we need to do the following things:

• Institute national standards applicable to all public K-12 institutions.  End No Child Left Behind’s race to the bottom.  Trigger a race to the top.

• Expand choices by encouraging more charter schools, which, unlike voucher-based programs, have a proven record of success.

• Increase teacher accountability with, among other things, merit-based pay.  If we want to improve the quality of our education, we need great teachers.  Poor ones need to look for a new line of work.

• Fund early education.  The earlier the learning starts, the smarter the kid.

• Rein in higher education costs and rethink the curriculum and approach to comport with emerging facts of life in the 21st century. Of the 30 fastest growing occupations in America, half require a bachelors degree or more.  But while in recent years we’ve seen gains in the percentage of Americans who graduate from college, fully two-thirds of Americans continue to go without.  Let’s change that.

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