Report calls for expanded Common Core State Standards
Texas Insider Report: WASHINGTON D.C. Several Task Force members agreed with some aspects of the report such as its description of the importance of schools in American society and its support for professional development for teachers.
But others expressed concerns about some of its information & recommendations.
The United States must improve its education system or risk imperiling national security and the economy according to a new report from a blue-ribbon panel convened by the Council on Foreign Relations.
A world-class education system is vital to preserving not just the countrys physical security but also to reinforce the broader components of American leadership such as economic dynamism an informed and active democracy and a coterie of informed professionals willing and able to live and serve around the world" sais Richard N. Haass president of the Council on Foreign Relations in an introduction to the report
U.S. Education Reform & National Policy" the product of the 30-member task force chaired by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Joel I. Klein former chancellor of the New York City Public Schools cites statistics demonstrating the failures of the school system
It also recommends more school-choice options an annual nationwide audit of educational achievement and national standards in subjects such as civics & foreign languages.
The report cites the small number of U.S. students studying science and technology at a college level and low scores overall on standardized tests including the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the Program for International Student Assessment or PISA as indicators of an underdeveloped human capacity."
The report also notes that less than a quarter of all students are eligible for the armed services due to either obesity criminal records lack of high school diplomas or inability to pass the armed forces entrance test.
At a press conference marking the publication of the report Ms. Rice and Mr. Klein emphasized that public education plays a unique role in forging a national identity. If we are not one nation we cannot defend one nation.
Four commission members however dissented from those recommendations outlining their concerns in dissents appended to the report.
Beyond English
The reports call for more instruction in civics and in foreign languages is aimed at improving U.S. students competitiveness and meeting the nations need for foreign service workers skilled in languages like Russian and Chinese.
Its about time" said Shuhan C. Wang the deputy director of the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland in College Park applauding the reports focus on educational substance. Studying languages has cognitive social and cultural benefits and it improves...national security and national prosperity" Ms. Wang said.
She said that the nations lack of a national policy on language learning is rare among industrialized countries where foreign language study often begins in elementary school.
The report also calls for the Common Core State Standards Initiative to be expanded to include foreign languages sciences and the arts.
The reports authors also recommend more choice in K-12 education through charter schools school vouchers and similar programs.
At the conference Ms. Rice described competitiveness as one of the nations strengths. Higher education in the U.S. is the gold standard internationally...because of the competition and...the multiplicity of choices."
The authors said these reforms will cost money. We just have to make sure that money thats spent is well spent."
It advocates privatization competition and market-based approaches that while compelling have not worked in a scalable and sustainable way either here or abroad" wrote Randi Weingarten the president of the American Federation of Teachers in a dissent co-signed by Carole Artigiani the founder of the nonprofit Global Kids and Linda Darling-Hammond an education professor at Stanford University.
Weingarten said that while she agreed that how we use education to ignite America is a really important notion" some of the nations that outperform the U.S. use educational models that differ from those proposed in the report.
An Old Story?
In truth theres nothing new here. It happened after Sputnik in 1957. It happened in 1983 with
A Nation at 
Risk. It seems to happen every time PISA results are released" said Kevin G. Welner director of the Colorado University-Boulders National Education Policy Center.
David Berliner a professor of education at Arizona State University in Phoenix agreed. Many books were written about my generation pointing out that we were idiots that teachers were babying us and that learning wasnt taking place...Certainly the nation was imperiled then just as Rice and Klein now say we are."
But he said that generation turned the 20th century into the American century." Nonetheless both Berliner and Welner were skeptical of the proposed solutions.
What we apparently have to do is to intensify all the things that weve been doing for the past couple of decades: More privatization more testing and test-based accountability more charter schools and vouchers and more deprofessionalization of teaching" said Welner.
We as a nation do have an equity crisis and this crisis includes our schools. We should as a nation be alarmed that so many children are growing up in areas of concentrated poverty" Welner said.
But I see little in this new report that takes seriously the causes or needed responses to the actual problems faced by our nations children. More testing charters and vouchers wont help a bit."
