Tough Choices/Rationale

[edit] Rationale

[edit] Generative Questions

The American public expects much from its schools. The Tough Choices report focuses on economic goals and values. It emphasizes the relationship between education, the American workforce, and the American standard of living. What should be made of this reasoning? What is right about it? What is wrong about it? To what degree does the report's rationale effect responses to its proposals? Should practical implications or theoretical concerns take greater precedence in considering the report's proposals?

[edit] Relevant Passage(s)

To help facilitate discussion, the following excerpt provides a general point of reference:

Our schools, in every important respect, are very much as we created them at the beginning of the 20th century, when the aim was to build a mass education system that could provide basic literacy for a nation of factory workers, shopkeepers, and (low- technology) farmers. That was an age in which math skills were far more important than math reasoning; when only the elite were expected to deal with ideas well and engage in abstract thought...when great profits were to be made not by coming up with the wholly new and exciting and customized thing, but by stamping out millions of copies of one thing at the lowest possible cost.

The United States dominated the world economically for decade after decade using the business model just described. And our low-cost competitors are using it now to beat us at our own game. While we know a lot more now than we did only a few years ago about the business model that we need to provide a high standard of living to our people, we continue to use the education model that was invented to support the old business model. Nothing could be more dangerous. It is time now to leave that model to those developing countries for which it represents real progress and for us to create the model that we need to prosper in the future.^[1]

[edit] Commentary and Critique

[edit] Economics and Education

An important aspect of the thinking in the report is captured in the following:

The best employers the world over will be looking for the most competent, most creative, and most innovative people on the face of the earth and will be willing to pay them top dollar for their services. This will be true not just for the top professionals and managers, but up and down the length and breadth of the workforce.

Strong skills in English, mathematics, technology, and science, as well as literature, history, and the arts will be essential for many; beyond this, candidates will have to be comfortable with ideas and abstractions, good at both analysis and synthesis. . .

If we continue on our current course, and the number of nations outpacing us in the education race continues to grow at its current rate, the American standard of living will steadily fall relative to those nations, rich and poor, that are doing a better job. If the gap gets to a certain – but unknowable – point, the world’s investors will conclude that they can get a greater return on their funds elsewhere, and it will be almost impossible to reverse course. . . ^[2]

This focus raises some questions: How important a concern should the American economy be for those responsible for setting up and running educational institutions? Where does it rank amongst other educational priorities? Should education in America be founded on a competitive nationalist framework that facilitates economic growth? Or should it be founded on a cosmopolitan framework that sees America as an entity working to improve the world?

[edit] Equity and Excellence

The report describes the scenario as it might be seen 15 years from now:

The Left got real school finance equity, a clear role for unions, the end of the threat of vouchers in particular, and the privatization of public schools in general. But the Right got rid of the bureaucracy and, in its place, got real school autonomy, real competition in a very competitive public school marketplace, the end of seniority rights for teachers, a revamped teacher licensing system that made the alternative route to licensure the only route, and the introduction of the most rigorous standards the nation had ever seen.^[3]

This quote illuminates well the clashing of the values of equity and excellence, a clashing that represents a fundamental tension in American education. The report claims to address both values equally. Does it? Or does the report embrace one more than the other? To what degree do answers to these questions depend upon the unit of analysis (i.e. nation state, globe) that is used to consider them?

[edit] Notes and References

1. ↑ National Center on Education and the Economy. (2006). Tough Choices or Tough Times: The Report of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, p. 32.
2. ↑ National Center on Education and the Economy. (2006). Tough Choices or Tough Times: The Report of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, p. XVIII-XIX (Exec. Summary).
3. ↑ National Center on Education and the Economy. (2006). Tough Choices or Tough Times: The Report of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, p. 95.