A disturbing look at the future of U.S. education

From Royal Oak and Madison Heights to Chippewa Valley and Fraser, local school districts have spent big money on advertising pitches that claim their schools are better than those in neighboring districts. That effort completely misses the mark.

A public opinion survey conducted by Macomb Community College found that nearly three-fourths of respondents believe that manufacturing remains a viable career choice for young people. That’s only half the story.

The National Governor’s Association put forth a bipartisan blueprint to create tougher Core Curriculum Standards for the nation’s schools, and conspiracy theorists quickly asserted that the plan is a communist plot or a joint effort by the “Chinese and Muslims” to infiltrate and destroy the U.S. education system. That’s the kind of nonsense that percolates up from our backward, hyper-partisan American political swamp and serves only to hold our nation back.

Because of globalization and the IT revolution and our new, hyper-connected world, education is the key to the emerging economy, to our future prosperity, to our standing in the world.

We are in an economic/education battle with Asia. And we are losing. Badly.

That is the message of the excellent book, “That Used To Be Us,” written in 2011 by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, a director of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. If you want to understand the true challenges plaguing America and the key issues that the future holds, this book is a must-read.
From the Friedman/Mandelbaum perspective, the American agenda is not about liberal or conservative doctrine. On issue after issue, they write, the strident Democrats are wrong and the hyperbolic Republicans are just as wrong. Only nonpartisan, practical solutions will fix this mess. Much of this column is based on the eye-opening details in the Friedman/Mandelbaum book.

Let’s start with the global scoreboard.
In testing of 15-year-old students in dozens of industrialized countries, the U.S. ranks below average in mathematics, behind nations such as Estonia, Slovenia and the Slovak Republic. In reading skills, the U.S. stands in the middle of the pack, trailing the likes of Belgium, Norway and Iceland. In science, we are average, with Poland and Hungary outscoring our kids.
These rankings are based on the Programme for International Student Assessment. The PISA exam tests kids’ ability to use their academic skills to solve real-world problems. These are “word problems,” not multiple choice, that force students to rely upon their knowledge, creativity, analytical abilities and critical thinking – all the attributes 21st Century employers demand of their workforce.
American educators who have told us that the significance of proficiency exam scores, such as the PISA results, is overrated have been proven wrong by recent studies. The claim that only elite students in other nations take international academic tests has also been debunked. In fact, poverty and dysfunctional family situations also are not a significant factor when measuring test results, according to a study commissioned by the governor’s association.

Some insist America has the “greatest education system in the world.” No, we have the greatest university system and in particular, the best graduate schools on the planet.
These uneducated claims are much like the platitudes offered that insist we have the greatest health care system in the world. No, we have the finest surgeons and medical researchers and the most high-tech health care methods. Our everyday health care for the populace is mediocre, based on patient outcomes.
What’s more, anyone who has recently visited a local hospital surely noticed that many of the surgeons and specialists and technicians are immigrants, mostly of Asian descent. Do we still have an “American” health system?

Each year, IBM sponsors an international university student competition commonly called the “Battle of the Brains.” In the 2011 contest, the United States placed just one team in the top 12 (a University of Michigan contingent).
Those local school districts who boast in their ads that they’re better than neighboring school districts are missing the point. If students in a south Macomb district score surprisingly well on standardized tests, as well as the Grosse Pointe kids, that means they’re probably no better than average when looking at the big picture. We must strive to have our kids match the scores in Shanghai. The students in that single Chinese city scored higher on the PISA test than any of the 65 nations who participated.
Meanwhile, earning the label of “honor student” in America these days means little. We praise our kids for effort, not achievement.

One-third of U.S. high school graduates are forced to take a remedial education program as a freshman in college. Some 23 percent of U.S. military enlistees are rejected because they cannot pass a basic academic assessment test. A sample test question: “If 2 plus X equals 4, what is the value of X?”
Most Macomb County residents may agree that manufacturing is still a viable profession, but do they realize that some high-tech manufacturing firms require that workers on the factory floor possess a 4-year degree? The complex CNC machines that populate factories across the nation require a basic proficiency in trigonometry.
At DuPont, one of the oldest companies in America, their production-line workers are expected to collaborate and innovate and help the company engineers devise new ways to improve productivity and cost-efficiency.
The old world in which you received your diploma and showed up the next day at the factory gates is gone. And it’s not coming back.

Any logical assessment of the fast-changing job market would conclude that public resistance of tougher curriculum standards is counterproductive, if not suicidal. We did that here in Michigan when parents and teachers complained that the state’s new algebra requirements were too tough. Many states responded to the rigors of the No Child Left Behind reforms by simply relaxing the rules.
Dozens of studies and research papers have shown that higher-education attainment boosts a nation’s economy and can lead to individual gains of hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of a career.

Numerous reports have also shown that quality teachers and principals make a bigger difference in a student’s performance than anything – including class sizes, lab and computer equipment and even curriculum requirements.
We have numerous model programs in cities and states – in outstanding public and charter schools -- that can show us the way toward greater quality and rooting out mediocrity. In many cases, more rigorous continuing education programs and cash incentives for educators are enough to make a big difference. This is not simply about increased funding for districts.
Our nation’s future depends on a meritocracy in the education community that is tied to quality outcomes for students. And it also depends on a new national attitude.
A generation ago, the U.S. population proportionately had the highest number of college grads in the world. Today, we are No. 9.

Consider this: China’s Tsinghua and Peking Universities are the two largest producers of students who receive Ph.D. degrees – in the United States.

If you believe that we are surrendering our American exceptionalism, if you realize that establishing tougher national curriculum standards for our schools is just a start, well, congratulations.
You passed the test.