Education: The Cure for the Diseases that Ails Us

Education: The Cure for the Diseases that Ails Us

Let’s start with an assertion that 90% of government spending on social programs at all levels is wasteful and unnecessary. The amount of spending is inversely related to our competitive position in the world and our national security. The ever increasing amount spent on social programs is resulting in a rapidly accelerating downward spiral from which, like a black hole, there is eventually little chance of escape.

Think about how much government spending and related costs born by taxpayers and private industry is related to social dysfunction. What do we spend on:
• Welfare
• Food stamps
• Medicaid
• Courts
• Prisons
• Social workers & associated bureaucracy
• Low income housing
• Emergency room healthcare for the uninsured
• Medical expenses due to poor lifestyles
o Malnutrition
o Obesity
o Smoking
o Drug and alcohol abuse and treatment
• Child abuse
• Women’s shelters
• Teen pregnancy
o No prenatal care and low birth weight babies
• Gang strike forces (police squads)
• …

For all our spending on programs and indirect costs one would think that expenditures would decrease as people are helped and have the ability to become self reliant. Yet this is not happening. Why?

Increasing numbers of people are net consumers of resources rather than contributors of resources. The blight of poverty in the United States is drowning us in debt and despair. All around us we see huge numbers of people out of work. Many of these people’s jobs will never return as their jobs are replaced by automation or outsourced to places with cheaper labor. Those lucky enough to still have jobs with stagnant wages are seeing increasing amounts of their paychecks going to pay for taxes and health insurance. As our national debt mounts and demographics change more government services will be cut and taxes increased in order for our country to not default on its debt.

Why does poverty exist and why do able bodied people not seek or no longer have jobs? Although this is a devilishly complicated question, it has a simple answer. Lack of education.

Our system of welfare and social programs has created a permanent underclass where, in too many cases, arcane rules force them to remain on welfare rather than pursue education or finding any job in the first place. People have found that they can survive indefinitely on welfare, generation after (increasingly large) generation. In many of our inner city schools, it is a goal, an achievement, for girls to have a child while in high school.

What can be done to reverse the situation where people sometimes through no fault of their own, sometimes by deliberate choice suck up the dwindling resources of those who work?

Is it because our government has gotten too big? Is it because our bureaucracy is amazingly inefficient (what % of money for any given program actually make it to those for which it was intended)?

It is because we have not held to account a government which does not deliver the services we are paying for. The FDA allows tainted food into our system both from domestic and foreign sources. Those charged with mining and oil drilling safety are literally in bed with the companies they are supposed to regulate. Our elected officials are under the thumb of lobbyists and special interests. But most of all, most damaging, and most inexcusable, is that our schools are failing.

The greatest products of our K-12 education system are dropouts and students unable to perform at grade level. Even among those who “graduate”, social promotion produces many kids that are unable to function productively in the world and foists upon our state colleges students who need significant remedial education to begin even the most elementary college level classes, wasting precious money, space, and professor’s time.

The threats posed by this single failure are devastating and frightening. Economic polarization and social unrest will continue to increase fueled by people who have given up hope of a better life and who have never been taught how to think critically, to rationally challenge assertions, to weigh options, to balance short term and long term costs and opportunities, and to make carefully thought out choices.

It is frightening to hear the responses that Jay Leno gets when he walks outside his studio and asks well dressed, presumably reasonably well educated and employed, people questions such as “In what year did the war of 1812 begin?” or “In what country is the Panama canal located?”

The impacts and implications of a poorly educated population in a globally competitive world are enormous and growing every day. The level of our education and skills directly determine our economic and our national security. Other smaller developed countries are enjoying the benefits of a highly educated and skilled workforce. Developing countries are investing heavily in education and are rapidly emerging as major players in economic and political spheres. Many of these countries are in the Far East. You may have heard of them; China, India, Taiwan, … the destinations for outsourced work and the source of a large fraction of our manufactured goods.

In his 1982 book, Out of the Crisis, Dr. Edwards Deming spoke to the quality crisis our manufacturing sector was facing, most notably the threat from Japanese auto companies. Today we have a crisis that dwarfs the quality problems we faced then and affects not only manufacturing but every business and industry. Indeed, every aspect of our society. We have a crisis in education.

Our education system is a mishmash of 50 widely varying standards funded by taxation systems that result in wildly varying levels of revenue available to schools depending on where ones lives. Any business will tell you that having to build to 50 different specifications with over 15,000 different funding levels will not produce a uniform, world class product.

In education, we perform poorly not only state to state but internationally. We cannot measure our performance against other states and feel good about being in the top quartile. We are not competing against a neighboring school district or another state. We are competing against the brightest minds around the world, teaching systems that focus on the knowledge and skills needed in a global economy, governments that have acknowledged that education is the backbone of their economic future and international standing and are making the investments that are resulting in highly educated, skilled, and competitive workforces.

Can you, as teachers, school administrators, local, state, and federal elected officials honestly say that you are competitive in this environment?

We will continually fall farther and farther behind if we do not change an educational system that served the industrial needs of half a century ago and today produces 30% dropout rates. This figure is vastly misleading if one also includes the grossly undereducated who do graduate but are not fit for international competition and are barely able to compete for low end jobs domestically.

Education is no longer something that is done when you are between the ages of 6 and 18. Education is now a lifelong pursuit necessary to remain relevant in any field, to adapt to rapidly evolving technology and ever changing markets.

To remain relevant in the world we must drastically cut unproductive spending so that our increasingly limited discretionary funds can be focused on producing wealth. Today our spending on social support programs is driven by systemic, system wide failures of our government – at all levels. To remain relevant we must focus our resources on efforts that have a high return on investment and produce those returns in a short period of time. Education is that investment. A workforce with the education and skills to compete globally will be net contributors to our collective wealth vs. a net drain on resources provided by an ever shrinking number of productive workers.

Without an educated workforce all other investments are impaired, diminished in value or are a complete waste. Low income housing becomes a complete write off as it is covered in graffiti, stripped of copper, and eventually demolished. Welfare is wasted by rules that discourage or prevent getting a job or an education that would lead to employment. Government investment in R&D is impaired by fewer people having the vision and skills to commercialize new discoveries.

When one takes a look at the condition of our school system one wonders how, on a macro level, it functions at all when the inputs are:
• Students who are not ready to learn. How can one be ready to pay attention and have a passion to excel when you are tired from working a minimum wage job late at night, are hungry, have little to no parental support, live in a dangerous neighborhood, have peers who deride any inclination to learn,…
• Schools where deferred maintenance has resulted in buildings crumbling from neglect
• Textbooks that do not exist, are ancient and falling apart, or are written by monopoly text book companies who, in the name of political correctness have stripped them of content or present only one sided perspectives.
• Teachers that have long since had the enthusiasm of youth beaten out of them and teach with methods and lessons plans created decades ago.
• Administrators preoccupied with keeping the lights on in the face of ever shrinking budgets and hamstrung in their ability to remove ineffective teachers or reward those that excel
• Unions that resist change, protect ineffectiveness, and promote performance at the lowest common denominator
• Learning standards that are so low that even if they are met the result is woefully inadequate with respect to the knowledge and skills needed to obtain a job with at least a living wage

With the exception of schools in affluent districts, it is a miracle that they function at all. If even 25% of all students are ready for college or training in the skills needed in a rapidly evolving, global economy then 75% of the spending on what should be one of the investments with the highest rates of return in the shortest amount of time is wasted having produced a product that is unfit for use or will need costly rework to become minimally functional.

Our own societal attitudes reflect a distain for education. Our elected officials are derided if they have attended a well regarded university. We even denigrate those who teach us. Professors are frequently labeled as “academics” in the fullest pejorative manner and accused of never having to live or create anything in the ‘real’ world. We wallow in our collective ignorance, deliberately mispronouncing words and using poor grammar to “appeal” & “resonate” with the electorate. Perhaps it is time that we create an electorate that values education and is not both illiterate and innumerate.

At the April 15, 2010 event at the Kennedy space center in Florida, President Obama announced his vision for NASA’s future. In an interview with National Public Radio, Tea Party protester and Titusville Patriot Group member, Don Forward, expressed his views. “I’m skeptical. I don't think it's going to be - they're virtual jobs, you know, it's nothing. And this is not going to help the people - it's going to be a lot of engineers and stuff like that, it's not going to help the day to day person who works out at the cape, actually making the cape run, I don't think it is.” http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126025832&ft=1&f=2

Our political parties talk endlessly about “getting people back to work.” This sounds good but the reality is that many of the jobs that are lost are not returning. The lowest skilled jobs are increasingly becoming scarce as their functions are automated and the new low level jobs require real skills. A single person may now oversee 10 self checkout stations at the grocery or home centers like Menards or Home Depot. Manufacturing workers are now responsible to run increasingly sophisticated machine tools and perform statistical process control. Independent truck drivers use GPS & systems to optimize routes to decide which run to take next to maximize profits. Administrative assistants must use office software & collaborate with other distant admins to arrange important meetings between company leaders.

Reform of our educational system will require sweeping changes in how we think about and value education. First we must realize that education is not a social support program. It is the core investment that establishes the foundation of our national competitiveness and security both economic and physical.

Reform must begin with accountability and globally competitive minimum standards uniformly deployed and supported throughout our educational system, regardless of where a student lives. The sciences need to again receive the emphasis that put us on the moon back in the 60s. Performance must be the determining factor in teacher compensation and advancement, and that compensation and the prestige of being a teacher must be comparable to that of rewarding careers the private sector.

In setting standards we must be clear about the ends and flexible about the means. Much has been said about the pitfalls of “teaching to a test.” If a test validates that a student has mastery of all subjects (not just math and science) at the corresponding grade level and is able to demonstrate an ability to read with comprehension, and write with cogent expression, then by all means teach to the test.

The changes required will face resistance at every level from local to powerful national interests such as teachers unions. Locally, the argument will be loss of local control. This is not the case. Local school boards are free to set standards that exceed those deemed necessary for global competition.

Unions need not be obstacles to progress. Originally, unions were set up to protect workers from abuse by employers. They evolved to teach skills to people to assure quality in their respective trades in order to be worthy of their premium pay and benefits. The world has changed since then. There are ever fewer low skill jobs and workers to be protected and ever more high skilled jobs where people who have the education and skills are now free agents commanding market prices for their services. If teacher pay and the prestige of a teaching career became competitive with private industry, if teachers no longer have to work in crumbling schools, if teachers have the tools, materials, and support to implement innovative, effective, teaching methods, if teachers are encouraged to excel, then the original goals of unionization will have been met. In order to remain relevant, unions then must earn the dues their members pay and the pay and benefits they seek from their communities by focusing on enhancing teacher skills and devising new and engaging teaching methods. Unions will need to evolve from “protecting” teachers to protecting students from ineffective teachers and assuring continually improving excellence within their ranks.

To achieve the needed revolution in teaching we must begin by accepting that the problem is not the students. It is us, the adults. It is us collectively who must change our attitudes about teaching, how we value, compensate, and promote teaching. It is us who continue to ignore the destruction of human souls at the hands of poverty but provide few meaningful alternatives to hopelessness. Is it us who believe, or at least act, as though those from impoverished backgrounds cannot be expected to achieve much so we set our standards to assure this outcome is realized.

Proof that socioeconomic status is not an excuse for failure is exemplified by Jaime Escalante who passed away just this year (March 30, 2010). A celebrated teacher in his home country of Bolivia, he started over in America mopping floors in a restaurant and doggedly earning the right, after many years of struggle, to teach in America’s schools beginning in 1974. He did not choose the most affluent school but rather a school in the barrios of East Los Angeles.

His success at teaching was not instant but he believed in his students and continually challenged them to improve until he was able to offer his school’s first calculus class in 1979. Eventually his school had more students taking and passing advanced placement calculus tests than all but three other public high schools in the entire country (students earn college credit for passing advanced placement tests in high school). His, and his student’s success inspired the movie Stand and Deliver.

In the end, petty politics and professional bickering lead him to leave and teach in another school. Jamie proved three things:
1. That students and their socioeconomic background are not the problem.
2. That inspired teaching can have tremendous results even in the poorest of schools.
3. That the forces of the status quo can overwhelm even the best.

Changes in the attitudes of adults and students alike will be slow. Success will initially be slow but as Jaime proved it can accelerate rapidly. It will begin with a teacher inspiring one or two students to become engaged in a subject, students that will ignore the jeers of their peers and study and realize that they have the capability to succeed. Their success will influence their (true) friends to see that a brighter future can be theirs and more parents and more teachers will become involved in creating success.

All this sounds a bit simplistic and perhaps it is. But that is how it worked in one school, with one teacher who believed.

The challenges may seem insurmountable but this cannot deter us from beginning work. Where to begin? Effort will be wasted if we do not know what the objectives are so we must first establish the performance standards, by subject, by grade level in order to be globally competitive. This cannot be left to politicians or done entirely locally. National standards need to be set by a board consisting of teachers, academics, and industry leaders that can identify and quantify what knowledge and skills are needed to compete with the best and brightest around the globe.

Second, we must identify and adopt teaching methods that leverage technology, engage students (locally and globally), and demonstrate applicability to the real world – at every step of education. It is too late to try and show a junior in high school how geometry applies to real life. This connection must be established early on when the wonder of childhood can be touched and inspired.

Third, we must value, reward, and evaluate teachers based on performance. This itself is a complex subject but it must motivate and reward teachers for taking on the most challenging teaching assignments – not the ones where students may be the easiest to teach.

Fourth, the funding for schools must be changed so that a uniform standard of education can be found independent of where one lives. This applies to the classroom environment (lab equipment, textbooks, etc.) for students, as well as resources for teachers, and the quality of teaching within the school. Funding and the quality of education can no longer be dependent on the wealth of the local community. Education must be valued as highly as national defense for our ongoing security for truly as our intellectual and economic security declines so does our national security.

Fifth, given that the vast majority of student will now in fact be prepared to attend college, and our state colleges no longer have to provide remedial reading and math instruction, we must assure that these student have access to post secondary education be it of a vocational nature or university studies and we must assure that this education is affordable and not saddle graduates with a huge debt to begin repaying upon graduation.

Thirty years ago the cost of a bachelors degree at a respected university was less than the cost of one year of college today. Our country recognized that a free high school education was (then) the passport to a job that would support a family. The entry criteria for that good job have been raised and it is now a college education. We must reconsider how our students can gain access to affordable, quality, post secondary education.

There are many other competing priorities to transform our educational system that must be addressed concurrently but without the above, effort on the rest will be largely wasted.

Why must we make these painful reforms? In reality they should not be painful but common sense. But since it is difficult to gain consensus on what common sense is, the short answer is that we cannot afford NOT to make the tough choices needed for meaningful and continually improving reforms. Failure to do so will result in an ever accelerating gulf between those that have an opportunity for a good education and for those that don’t or choose not to participate. Social unrest will result in an increasingly resentful lower class and the privileged will take refuge in increasing numbers behind their gated communities - self styled, but comfortable, prisons of plenty.

The costs of a lack of education are largely visible at an economic level but much more costly in terms of wasted lives and human suffering. Conversely, some benefits of an education are easily identifiable but most are intangible quality of life benefits and are as difficult to value as the suffering inflicted by poverty.

Early in this article a few of the visible costs of a poor education were listed. What about the indirect and opportunity costs of:
• Lost government revenue
• Wasted human potential
• Increased spending on security to protect business and personal property from desperate people in or near poverty
o Consider the irony of the growth of low wage jobs as security guards whom we hire to protect us from those with similarly low wages
• A pervasive sense of hopelessness that prevents people from believing that meaningful alternatives exists and spawns successive generations of people (in geometrically increasing numbers) who also believe that their situation is hopeless
• The absence of notions of responsibility and accountability and increasing notions of entitlement simply because of being impoverished
• …

In a similar manner the direct benefits of an education are easy to enumerate:
• Income to support a middle to upper class life style
• Taxes paid
• Not a consumer of social support programs
• Ability to afford private schools and respected universities
• Health care

Some benefits, while very real, are more difficult to value:
• Safe neighborhoods
• Reliable transportation
• Ability to make wise lifestyle choices
• Access to a wide variety of career opportunities
• Engagement with companies and people from around the globe
• …

Given the myriad costs and benefits, the return on investment from a world class education can be calculated in nearly an infinity of ways. Any way it is calculated, the returns are exceedingly large, and near term (with respect to other potential investments).

Let’s look at a highly simplified model of the costs of social programs using the following assumptions:
1. Generation 0 begins with a single person consuming social programs
2. Each person in each has two children
3. Every person remains social programs for their entire lives
4. The lifespan is constant at 75 years
5. The cost (not indexed for inflation) of social programs including overhead and spending on the individuals if $50,000/year

Here is the data showing that social spending will increase geometrically forever.

Generation # of people in Generation Cost of Generation / year Cost over 75 year lifetime
0 1 $ 50,000 $ 3,750,000
1 2 $ 100,000 $ 7,500,000
2 4 $ 200,000 $ 15,000,000
3 8 $ 400,000 $ 30,000,000
4 16 $ 800,000 $ 60,000,000



















If a single assumption is changed, that one child of the two in each successive generation does not need social services then each generation only has one person using social programs and the costs remain constant at $3,750,000 forever.

Now let’s make some highly simplified assumptions about a person who gets further education:
1. Starting salary at age 23 is $50,000
2. Works through age 65
3. Average raise in excess of inflation is 3%
4. Overall tax rate (all taxes) is 30%
5. Savings/year is 5% of gross salary
6. Annual rate of return on savings is 4%

When this person retires:
• Lifetime salary $ 4,274,195
• Lifetime taxes $ 1,282,258
• Lifetime spending $ 2,778,227
• Lifetime savings (including interest) $ 477,354

There are several things to note from this:
• Assuming all assets are spent at the time this person dies he would have contributed $ 4,537,839 to the economy vs. costing $3,500,000. A difference of $8,037,839 per person over a lifetime.
• This person paid in over $1.2M in ALL taxes, but the person he was supporting cost $3.5M in social spending alone.
• It takes 2.73 educated workers to support one person on social programs even if ALL taxes paid went ENTIRELY toward social spending.

Even though these models are extremely simplistic they clearly show one thing, that a system that does not create an educated workforce is not sustainable. If people do not have the knowledge and skills to avoid social programs or are not provided the tools they need to move off them then our economy will collapse under the weight of welfare and global impotence.

A quick internet search for the benefits of education and the costs of social spending returns many results. I will cite only two here but they validate, with considerably more rigor the basic problem revealed above with simplistic assumptions.

From a January, 2007 study entitled The Costs and Benefits of an Excellent Education for All of America’s Children and produced by: Henry Levin of Teachers College, Columbia University; Clive Belfield, City University of New York; Peter Muennig, Columbia University and Cecilia Rouse, Princeton University (http://www.cbcse.org/media/download_gallery/Leeds_Report_Final_Jan2007.pdf):

“We find that each new high school graduate would yield a public benefit of $209,000 in higher government revenues and lower government spending for an overall investment of $82,000, divided between the costs of powerful educational interventions and additional years of school attendance leading to graduation. The net economic benefit to the public purse is therefore $127,000 per student and the benefits are 2.5 times greater than the costs.

If the number of high school dropouts in this age cohort was cut in half, the gov-ernment would reap $45 billion via extra tax revenues and reduced costs of public health, of crime and justice, and in welfare payments. This lifetime saving of $45 billion for the current cohort would also accrue for subsequent cohorts of 20-year olds.”

If the return on a high school education is 2.5 times its cost – imagine the return on a college education.
A study by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, entitled The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Households to the U.S. Taxpayer Published on April 4, 2007 by Robert Rector, Christine Kim and Shanea Watkins, Ph.D. concluded the following (low-skill households refer to households headed by persons without a high school diploma) (http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2007/04/The-Fiscal-Cost-of-Low-Skill-Households-to-the-US-Taxpayer ):

“Receiving, on average, at least $22,449 more in benefits than they pay in taxes each year, low-skill households impose substantial long-term costs on the U.S. taxpayer. Assuming an average 50-year adult life span for heads of household, the average life¬time costs to the taxpayer will be $1.1 million for each low-skill household, net of any taxes paid. If the costs of interest and other financial obligations are added, the average lifetime cost rises to $1.3 million per household.”
This is not just about avoiding social spending. It is about global competition. If other countries take the technological lead (in any area you choose) then we will become importers of products based on that technology simultaneously transferring our money to them and further reducing our standard of living as we are forced further down the economic food chain, creating an ever increasing demand for social programs.

This is a dangerously slippery and steep slope - and we are poised at the edge.

Given the substantial ROI of education, how quickly might these returns be realized?

If progress is made in controlling the cost of college education and programs are established to assure that high school graduates who are prepared for college level work can attend college then benefits will be realized in only four years.

As learning standards are set, high school classroom environments improved, teaching methods changed, teachers are rewarded based on performance, and the vast majority of students graduate at grade level, then these gains will be realized in six years.

As these changes are driven further down the K-12 continuum the gains will be sustained and more substantial as students are engaged and enthused about learning at ever earlier ages and retain their love of learning.

As parents see the changes and support for their student they in turn will become more supporting and assure that their children are attending school and avoiding destructive behavior. Students see that there is a path that leads to a rewarding career and as more in fact succeed fewer and fewer will deride those who want to learn as they too will want the trappings of success. Students will come to school ready to learn.

As success takes hold, spending on social programs is naturally reduced and the money can be diverted to education vs. subsistence. The same overall amount of money is spent on social programs and education only it is being spent in a much more productive way. It is like an investment in a machine tool that will increase efficiency AND quality thousands of percent. We can’t afford NOT to make the investment.

Instead of a vicious cycle of massively wasteful and even destructive spending, a virtuous cycle is created where spending is increasingly focused on activities that have a very positive return on education. The beauty is that this return is the greatest for those most in need!

As Jaime Escalante demonstrated, although money is important it is not the determining factor nor is it a precondition to begin making the changes needed. Education is not just a concern for those who have children in school. It impacts everyone. If you want to have someone funding your social security then, given the demographics, you want kids to be able to have high paying jobs!

Where do we begin? We need to initially focus on things within our sphere of control. The thing most in our sphere of control is ourselves. We need to begin to individually and
then as a community change our attitude. We need to:
• Recognize that all efforts need to be directed at improving student outcomes. Not outcomes for administrators, or unions, or …
• Engage students in removing graffiti (detention activity?) and making their school something they can be proud of
• Assure that maintenance staff provide a clean environment for learning
• Engage the community in assuring school buildings are properly maintained
• Assure that classrooms are a place of learning and safe for both students and teachers (even if it means security people in each classroom)
• Establish zero tolerance for disruptive behavior and truancy
• Transform unions into the engines of teaching innovation. Form groups at local, state, and national levels to:
o Research and create new teaching methods that use the latest technology to engage students
o Devise compensation/incentive programs that measure and reward excellence in teaching
o Provide input into the standards for subjects at each grade level to assure they are constantly updated to be globally competitive
o Assure that time during the school year is focused on the students and that time outside of the school year is focused on teacher and technique development. Teachers are paid for an entire year. Instead of taking time away from teaching during the school year, time during the summer should be spent on advancing teachers skills, revising teaching methods, and continually updating class content. Summer is not entirely for vacation…
o Reinvigorate teachers who have had the passion of youth beaten out of them
• Transform administration into the engines of innovation to:
o Implement the teaching methods and enforce learning standards for promotion to the next grade
o Shape legislation to provide uniform, reliable funding for schools (independent of the wealth of the district)
o Assure that legislation is written to advance student success and that it can be administered efficiently
o Create the most efficient mechanisms to administer school districts so that the maximum amount of resources are directed toward students and the learning environments
o Work with bodies to assure that meaningful, globally competitive, national standards are established for each grade and subject
• Stop social promotion
o Provide support to students who need help and actively engage in remedial work
o Hold school teachers and administrators accountable for the havoc wreaked on children & society by social promotion
• Engage with the community to let them know of school performance (good and bad), school needs, and activities underway to increase student achievement
o Require parental/guardian participation in student’s educational activities
o Assure awareness of student achievement and school attendance/behavior
o Establish community support for their school boards, administrators, and teachers so that the community can take pride in their schools and students.
o Assure the community values education, will not tolerate truancy, supports students and helps them to be ready to learn see the value in education.
o The community must hold school boards, administrators, and teachers accountable for student success and for providing the tools for success – enabling teachers, providing facilities conducive to teaching AND learning
• …

These local efforts must be leveraged to engage at the state level to:
• Provide input in forming globally competitive national standards for each topic in each grade
o A high school diploma must represent a uniform level of achievement no matter the state or school district in which it was awarded
o States and local school boards are always free to exceed these standards
• Establish effective teaching methods with the equipment and materials to implement them
• Implement a system that rewards teachers based on performance (itself a very complex topic – but one that needs to be addressed)
• Assure that processes are in place where unions and administrators can rapidly remove ineffective teachers
• Assure that school needs are clearly articulated and desired programs are well defined including expected outcomes, actions to achieve those outcomes, a mechanism to meaningfully measure progress, and needed funding.
• Establish procedures to assure that social promotion has stopped
• Provide a funding mechanism that is stable and does not depend on the wealth of the local community
o Fund deferred maintenance on school facilities
o Fund new or upgrades to existing facilities to provide state of the art learning environments and equipment
• …

Who would not want to work in a system where people are unified and working to make the above a reality? What community would not support efforts that create success for students, teachers, and administrators? Who would not like to see results in only four years and ever increasing returns beyond that?

We have over 15,000 school districts in the US. 15,000 living laboratories where new teaching methods and tools can be piloted rapidly and the most successful communicated and implemented by others. We also need to look at the tools, techniques, and curriculum used internationally, and rapidly learn from them as well as the governmental policies that support the success of their school systems. Unless we look at education from a global perspective we will be blind to what has created success around the world. Remember, the objectives are firm, the means are flexible.

Solutions will come from both the public and private sectors. Already we have multiple choices for education including public, private, and charter schools. Where public dollars are involved we must assure a level playing field for all options. Schools receiving public funds cannot cherry pick who attends. People with means will always have the option of sending their children to private schools. Yet the wealthy have a large stake in the success of the educational system as a whole. Their companies will need skilled employees, they will want their tax dollars (indeed everyone’s tax dollars) to provide world class infrastructure and advanced R&D instead of being taxed to provide endless subsistence to the uneducated masses. It would be in their interests to not have to invest in home security systems and gated communities to protect themselves from those living without hope.

An image of the future without change is simply frightening. Unless we rapidly and drastically reform our educational systems our standard of living will be diminished to that of an economy whose time has passed and is largely irrelevant to the world around us. We will rapidly become poor relative to those who have recognized that their economies are dependent on a world class workforce and have consistently made education the backbone of national policy. Without a competitive workforce, the income divide will be unimaginably vast. A few will be extremely wealthy, a few more will be able to live comfortably, but the vast majority will be poor and social unrest will force the well off to live in their self styled prisons.

Yet, a vision of the future that begins only with a change in our attitudes is exciting and invigorating. There is no other area in which an investment of our resources (time, effort, money) can have the magnitude of return on investment in so many areas in such a short period of time.
• In four years – more college graduates as a result of
o Making sure students that are prepared to begin college level work can afford to attend
o Our state colleges and two year schools will no longer be backwater institutions wasting resources on remedial classes and attempting to teach college level classes to those with barely an 8th grade education
o Addressing the problems that result in 20% of college freshman not returning as sophomores
o Addressing the problems that result in a bachelors degree taking more than four years to earn and college’s six year graduation rate of 65% (this is worse than our high schools!)
• In six years – high school students will be graduating and performing at grade level as measured by globally competitive standards
o Our teachers will be engines of teaching innovation
o Our administrators will be engines of hyper efficient administration, advocates for the innovative teaching methods presented by teachers, and shapers of legislation that assures uniform education across our country
• In 12 years – with active community support, parental engagement, our students will enjoy the support of parents, peers, and their entire neighborhood as people embrace the value of education and see a path for the future of all children – not just their own.

The numbers of both sides of the balance sheet are huge, the money wasted on social spending, the returns to society of an educated, skilled, contributing member of society. The benefit is the SUM of those huge numbers.

In less than a decade we can be well on our way to eliminating well over half of our spending on social programs. Instead of perpetuating viscous the cycle of poverty and hopelessness we will be creating virtuous cycles of hope and success. With a globally competitive workforce we will:
• Maintain and increase our leadership in technological innovation
• Increase our economic, energy, and national security
• Lead the world in renewable energy technology and its commercialization
• Commercialize increasing amounts of fundamental research and development
• Increase the health of our society and reduce health care costs
• Reduce our national deficit and pay down the national debt
• Redirect spending to building and maintaining 21st century infrastructure
• Reduce political bickering over wasteful spending
• Increase people’s retirement security as they will have personal saving that reduce the dependence on government based programs
o Economic independence may open door to rational discussion on who should receive social security. Social security would be a sufficiently small fraction of overall retirement income that foregoing it would not be a hardship.
• Productively engage the talents of our people
• Create and retain the jobs of the future at home
o The economy will continue to evolve and jobs will continue to move around the world. With our workforce we will be creating the new technologies and jobs and our system of education and retraining will allow us to continually adapt our workforce to higher value pursuits.

• …

We are in a global race to lead in education and produce a competitive workforce. Every challenge and our government faces and every initiative it undertakes from high speed rail, to smart electrical grids and green technologies depends on this. If we fail to lead we will be buying technology from emerging economies like China, India, and Taiwan.

The challenge is clear. The benefits of success are monumental, as are the costs of inaction.

Reform, change, and adaptation are not one time efforts. Our world is constantly and rapidly changing and we must be at the forefront of these changes. The only way to assure this is to have the best educated workforce in the world.

Let’s get going!