July 20, 2008
TECHNOS QUARTERLY Summer 1996 Vol. 5 No. 2
FORUM: National Education Summit
By Sybil Eakin
A New Initiative in the Battle for Standards
The National Education Summit on March 27 and 28 in Palisades, New York, spotlighted a significant new realignment of the forces fighting for educational reform. Initiated and co-hosted by IBM's CEO Louis Gerstner and Governor Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, the Summit brought together an exclusive list of invited conferees. More corporate CEOs attended than governors, and more of each of those groups than representatives of educational organizations.
Six years ago, President George Bush called together the nation's governors, led by future President Bill Clinton, to proclaim an ambitious program to upgrade the country's schools and “build a nation of learners.” The bipartisan partnership of the Republican administration and the largely Democratic governors should have ensured that strong educational reforms got off to a fast start. When Clinton succeeded Bush, the reform movement, transformed into “Goals 2000” and supported by an overwhelming bipartisan vote in Congress early in 1994, might have been expected to move forward even more rapidly. But it was not to be.
Now, six years after the original conference, we have seen the dissolution of the partnership between the governors and the White House. Secretary of Education Richard Riley attended this Summit as a “special invited guest” without being offered either a podium or a role, and the 30 or so invited “resource people” included representatives of foundations, think tanks, public and educational television stations, a few leaders of professional teaching organizations, and state and district school superintendents.
The U.S. Department of Education is under siege. In today's new coalition, state executives are taking their cues from the leaders of AT&T, Eastman Kodak, the Boeing Company, Proctor & Gamble, and others. The CEOs want high educational standards and accountability in the form of meaningful assessments, and they are prepared to support students who make the grade with good jobs. With only six governors who attended the 1989 Summit still in office and the movement toward achieving Goals 2000 stalled, the CEOs are pressing their case to current governors, both to urge a new commitment to educational improvement and to provide persuasive dollars-and-cents reasons as to why such reform is needed now.
When President Clinton addressed the participants, he tacitly acknowledged that any whisper of federal involvement in school reform would kill it. Instead, he volleyed the responsibility back to the governors, charging them to create high standards, brave the heat, and demand accountability. He said they should require children to pass tests for promotion to higher levels of school and get rid of deadwood among teachers and principals. He urged them to fight an “attitude problem” about education in the U.S., which he described as a conviction that “the primary determinant of success and learning is either IQ or family circumstances instead of effort.” The governors, the President said, need to publicize their belief that “all kids can learn…everything they need to know to be good citizens and successful participants in the American…and…global economy. Unless you can convince your constituents that that is the truth…all of your efforts to raise standards and…have accountability through tests and other assessments will not be as successful as they ought to be.”
The stated goals of this meeting are modest compared to those of 1989. The outcome of the first education summit was a set of sweeping goals, pledging that by the year 2000, all children would enter school “ready to learn,” that the professional skills of teachers would be improved, that all schools would be free from drug-, alcohol-, and violence-induced disruptions, and that U.S. students would be “first in the world” in science and math. In contrast, at the end of the current conference, participants voted for a Policy Statement that committed the governors to establish high academic standards, assessments, and accountability in the schools of their states. CEOs are to look at the school records of job applicants, push parents to get involved in education, and help schools acquire technology. Both groups agreed to establish an independent “clearinghouse,” free of ties to any federal agency, that would both provide information to help the states establish standards and assessments and would coordinate their efforts.
The move to establish voluntary national standards for core academic subjects had begun even before the 1989 Education Summit. That year, the National Association of Teachers of Mathematics completed and published their Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics. In 1991 President Bush followed up on the Summit of 1989 by proposing legislation called “America 2000.” Congress authorized DOE grants to organizations for developing voluntary national standards for other core subjects. Since then, standards have been published in science, history, math, civics, and language arts. While math and science standards have been generally well received, the history and language arts standards are widely criticized.
The existing subject-area standards, which differ greatly in length, quality, and specificity, have been largely completed. In addition, many states have written their own standards or curriculum frameworks, or are in the process of doing so. Furthermore, nearly every state has instituted assessments to measure the achievement and progress of students. So why—given the progress that has been made—are the CEOs of major U.S. corporations pushing governors toward renewed efforts to create standards, assessments, and accountability?
One answer to this question is the current state of U.S. education. Many reports show that American children rank poorly in academic achievement when measured against their peers in other developed countries. The consequences of this bears directly on the bottom line. Businesses have calculated the cost of poorly trained employees and found it unacceptably high. After paying corporate taxes that go toward local education, they find that graduates require training in basic skills before they can even begin to cope with job demand. In 1995, MCI spent about $7.5 million in basic remediation. Motorola calculated its costs at the annual average of $1,350 per employee for basic skills courses. The costs extend from remediation to lost time and productivity, substandard work, social problems, unrealized taxes, and unemployment claims. In 1988, the U.S. Department of Labor estimated that worker illiteracy cost eight southeastern states $57.2 billion. Furthermore, “basic” literacy judged adequate in 1988 is likely to be inadequate in 1998. Global competition has pushed the “basic” level ever higher. Business leaders believe that they can no longer wait for “voluntary” standards to be widely adopted and enforced.
Today's political climate also has affected the acceptability of existing standards. Education, a primary responsibility of states and districts, was one of the first areas targeted by those arguing for “devolution” of federal power and increased state and local control. Because many of the existing standards were underwritten by U.S. DOE grants, they are perceived as federal meddling with local control of schools. Even Goals 2000, which offers federal grants to states to develop their own curriculum standards and assessments, has been viewed with suspicion.
Finally, some of the goals already promulgated fail to provide the guidelines that developers of curricula and assessments need to direct their work. Critics of the new language arts standards call them meaninglessly vague. In their first version, the history standards offered up a large number of content specifics that became clay pigeons to be shot down by those who objected that “political correctness” had replaced cherished passages of our national narrative.
In a period in which not only the content but also the concept of curriculum standards is controversial, this Summit has evoked varied reactions. TECHNOS has sought out the following perspectives of key groups—CEOs, governors, educators, and those involved in the development of standards and the textbooks based on them—for their views on the Summit and the direction that movement toward tougher standards will take in the future.
Perspectives and Observations on the Summit
Governors
The Steering Committee that planned the Summit consisted of 12 members—six CEOs and six governors, with Louis Gerstner, Jr., of IBM and Governor Tommy G. Thompson of Wisconsin serving as co-hosts. Patricia Sullivan, director of educational legislation for the National Governors' Association (NGA), served as chief logistics expert and planner for the governors, working closely with Stan Litow of IBM, who performed the same functions for the CEOs. Sullivan shares here some of her own views of the Summit and offers explanations for its extraordinary success in achieving a consensus among disparate and sometimes opposing views. Governor Thompson of Wisconsin and Governor Robert Miller of Nevada, chairman and vice-chairman respectively of the National Governors Association, describe how the governors' commitment to raising achievement, particularly through increased use of technology, will play out in their states. Governor Kirk Fordice of Mississippi—like many other governors who attended—was reported to have been “all fired up” by what he heard and observed there. His education adviser, Jeanne Forrester, accompanied him to Palisades and suggests some reasons for the excitement.
Normally, governors who have survived often fiercely partisan election campaigns in their home states cannot be expected to hurry into any bipartisan agreements, but at the Summit, they all voted unanimously to support the commitments of the Policy Statement. Patricia Sullivan of the NGA affirms that the Summit was “truly a bipartisan event. We had governors on both sides who were willing to really step in and push. [It's] always interesting when you have that many politicians in a room. During breakout sessions, there were lots of discussions about pluses and minuses of pushing for standards. Governors heard what trouble they could be getting into with either the Left or the Right, yet they chose to move forward. I'm not sure what brought that about, but that's clearly what happened.” Breakout groups were carefully designed so that each included people with opinions across the political and philosophical spectrum, but “not so hostile or at odds that they couldn't have a conversation. Assigning participants to groups was a lot more difficult than coming up with a seating chart for a dinner.”
In addition to the bipartisan Policy Statement, Sullivan points to other evidence that the governors' commitment at the Summit is carrying over into action in their states. “I've heard from governors' offices that I've never heard from before, so I know that people who have not necessarily embraced the idea of reform before are now interested. We've got a number of governors who are talking about holding summits of their own and others who have asked for very specific technical assistance on a particular area. That's happening now, even with legislatures in session and other things going on.”
The day after Lou Gerstner of IBM addressed the annual NGA conference in July 1995, Governor Tommy Thompson called and asked him “to co-host an Education Summit between the nation's governors and America's top corporate executives.” Thompson says, “I knew this would be a powerful coalition that could ignite a national debate on the need for standards and assessments in this country.” According to Thompson, the Charlottesville Summit failed because it was a “top-down venture.” “The National Education Summit has a much greater chance of succeeding because it is a venture from the ground up,” he says. “The standards will be set by communities and states, not the federal government. This will spark a race to the top as each community—and eventually, each state—tries to outperform others, and, eventually, as each state tries to outperform the other.”
Tommy
Thompson
Technology, according to Governor Thompson, will play an important role in bringing about change and higher achievement. Teachers will have to be trained to use new media. “In many cases,” he adds, “the students are more up to speed on the new computer technology than our teachers, so there is a need to train our educators.” Businesses can play a major role in getting technology into the schools and supporting training in its use. “In Wisconsin,” says Thompson, “we have a strong public-private partnership, in which private businesses are providing nearly $40 million to bring technology into our schools. Technology is the great equalizer. Technology will make sure that no school is wanting any teacher or course.”
Governor Bob Miller of Nevada also left the Summit with a renewed commitment to technological support. He began planning for hardware, software, and training, as soon as he returned from Palisades. Currently involved in drafting Nevada's next biennial budget, Miller intends to “send a clear message that classroom technology is a major priority item.” The project he proposes will require “a broad-based partnership that includes state government, local school districts, the corporate community, and the federal government.” He concludes that “we really can't afford not to computerize our classrooms, either from a budget viewpoint or from the viewpoint of higher educational achievement. The demonstrations we saw at the Summit made it clear that bringing technology to the classrooms is a wise and necessary investment in terms of teacher effectiveness and student achievement.”
IBM
CEO Louis Gerstner addresses participants, flanked by Wisconsin Governor Tommy
Thompson (left) and Nevada Governor Robert Miller.
Governor Fordice also was very excited by the technology demonstrations, according to Jeanne Forrester, his education adviser. She says that Fordice was “very interactive with the presenters and quite interested in the successful stories about how technologies made a difference.” The Summit “reinforced all that the Governor had been working on in Mississippi, both in pushing for higher standards (he is on the National Goals Panel) and in involving business leaders in the drive to improve schools.” Fordice, known as the “economic development governor,” has had a state workforce development council supported by 15 local councils. These councils work actively to pull together the business and education communities to support training and education and to develop standards and accountability. Says Forrester, “We're inviting these business CEOs to be full partners. Educators alone can't do the job. Parents alone can't do it. Communities can't do it in isolation. While we think that [local schools] should have a great deal of autonomy, it really is going to take a collaborative effort to bring about what needs to happen in education.”
In a sense, reform and the imposition of higher standards may be easier to effect in a largely rural state like Mississippi, where small communities are closely tied to local businesses. “Economics,” Forrester explains, “demands that we give attention to the business and industry folks. We have so few options.” Communities respond to the needs of local businesses because it's mutually beneficial; and, because the businesses are scattered across the state, their needs and demands are not perceived as a burdensome mandate from a distant big city. In fact, “The voices of businessmen keep us a little more rational and give us a little more common sense than usual.”
CEOs
There is no doubt that the CEOs who served on the planning committee for the Summit are disturbed about the basic literacy skills of their employees and the effect of poor educational achievement on their bottom lines. However, the concern of IBM Chairman Louis Gerstner and the other executives goes much deeper, according to Stanley S. Litow of IBM's International Foundation. The Summit reflects their conviction that good schools are fundamental to the fabric and health of American communities. Pat Willis, president of the BellSouth Foundation, says the Foundation's extensive involvement with educational reform has demonstrated that change must be “systemic and across the board.” Steve Ferguson of Indiana's Cook Group elaborates on the cost to business of a workforce that is not ready to face the challenges of a globally competitive future. Marilyn Reznick of AT&T addresses the commitment of business to work with the states and to help them raise their standards to a high level.
Pat
Willis
Litow, also director of the Corporate Support Programs at IBM and key organizer of the Summit, spoke of the urgency that led to the meeting: “We recognize that we can't have a successful company in an unsuccessful community. And communities can't be…truly successful unless their schools are working.…Communities are not competing against neighboring [U.S.] states, but against countries across the globe. Nothing is more vital in that economic competition than the quality of [our] workforce and the quality of [our] education system. It is totally integrated. Education is significant as a predominate business issue and as a predominate community and social concern. And those two issues came together very well at the Summit.”
According to Litow, the Summit achieved consensus on issues that can be among the most divisive in the country. He attributes this remarkable success to careful planning and to the limitations of the issues to be addressed. “We've got to focus,” he says, “on the bottom line, which is standards and accountability. If we do that and if we focus our efforts in that way—laser sharp—then we're finding more agreement than disagreement. The governors and business leaders agreed that standards was the most important question.” Pointing out that the Summit was structured to achieve a joint commitment and ownership among governors and the business community, Litow said, “Every governor had to bring a key business leader to the Summit. They sat next to one another, they deliberated together, they attended all sessions together and then when the states were asked to vote, the governor and the business leader cast one vote for their state. There was real consensus, real agreement, real deliberation.”
The Summit's Policy Statement was adopted by a unanimous vote. As Litow says, “What you basically had was the business leadership of the United States, the governors of the United States, the President of the United States getting together and saying [they] don't want to argue about who sets these standards, [they just] want these standards in place.” The results of the intense two-day spotlight on education were significant for those attending and for the general public. “The governors were fired up. The business leaders were fired up. One state commissioner of education said that he'd spent more time focused on education with his governor at the Summit than in the two years since he'd been appointed. Over the two days of the Summit, we had 196,000 hits on our Web page. Through C-Span and the World Wide Web, this Summit reached hundreds of thousands of Americans.”
According to Pat Willis, who is also director of corporate and education affairs for the BellSouth Corporation, business must play an active role in helping bring change to schools, at the local level and, more significantly, statewide. “We strongly encourage our 85,000 employees to work at the individual school level. But change in systems comes about through policy and government changes, and you can't do that at the school level because schools are governed by district boards and state policies. So, as a corporation, we have to work at the district and state level in order to bring about that systemic change. Business success doesn't depend on one local school….It draws on a much broader geographic area. As a parent myself, I want to be able to look beyond my local community to know that what my child is getting in school is going to assure that when he leaves Atlanta and Georgia, he will be able to compete.”
Steve
Ferguson
Steve Ferguson, vice president and CEO of Cook Group, Inc., is also president of Indiana's Higher Education Commission, a committee that is very concerned with the school-to-work transition and student attainment level. His state's statistics show that nearly 25 percent of high school graduates head for jobs in manufacturing, but the skill level in this group is very troubling. At a Chrysler plant in the state, 2,500 workers needed basic skills education. Nearly all students entering Indiana's open admissions and vocational post-secondary institutions require remediation. Ferguson says the Summit did a good job of creating national awareness of an important problem. He was also impressed by the technology displays, which he saw as part of a drive to “educate the governors about the role and importance of technology in the workplace of the future.”
Marilyn Reznick, vice president for education programs at the AT&T Foundation, says that AT&T CEO Robert Allen was also pleased with the outcome of the Summit, but that they all recognize that their work is only beginning. Reznick says that business must remain active and involved in helping states and localities improve their schools. “We can't leave the Summit and say, ‘Okay, we'll hold states and schools accountable, and then if they don't deliver, turn our backs.’ It can't work that way and we can't walk away if the debate heats up. We have to remain visible at the local level to show we are committed to working through the issues. If there is debate and discussion, we have to be a part of that. A lot of people are talking about having individual state summits based on the model of the national Summit. We could play a role in those meetings.”
The most promising aspect about the Summit, says Reznick, is that it focused national attention on an urgent problem and demonstrated in the clearest way possible that the country's leaders were prepared to address it: “When 40 governors and 40 CEOs spend two days of their time on [educational] issues, that says a lot. They really are committed to continuing this work. It won't stop after the Summit. We all care about this issue. We all want to help improve education and help students perform better.
The business leaders, like the governors, know that the Summit was only the first step. In a statement published just before the Summit in Work America, the newsletter of the National Alliance of Business, Lou Gerstner described his vision for American schools: “I envision schools that set high academic standards for all their students and are held accountable for performance-based results. In these schools, students are actively engaged learners, and teachers coach students toward academic goals while they support and learn from each other. [Here] technology is as commonplace as the blackboard and has become integrated into every aspect of the classroom to support learning, instruction, and assessment. Our schools are part of a community that includes parents, businesses, government and neighborhood groups, [all] contributing and participating in the success [of the schools]. This dream is within our reach—we know what works.”
Educators
Although the Summit was sponsored by a coalition of governors and CEOs of major corporations, the education establishment was not excluded. Representatives of several professional organizations attended the conference as “resource people” and participated in panel discussions and breakout groups. Others submitted information or papers that became part of the large collection of background and briefing materials distributed to the conferees and available over the Internet. Here, Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Beverly H. Sgro, Virginia's secretary of education, and David Hornbeck, superintendent of Philadelphia Public Schools, address various aspects of the Summit. David Hornbeck, who attended the Summit, thinks that one of its most important outcomes was the public focus on education issues, and especially, on the need to raise expectations for the achievements of all students: “The setting of standards at high levels—with technology as one of the tools—helps teachers help kids. These are two of the essential components of the school restructuring effort. Few school districts, including few urban districts, have set high standards; therefore, it has been easier for stakeholders to get away with low expectations of children.”
David
Hornbeck
The Summit, Hornbeck says, “helps create a climate within which expectations go up.”
Al Shanker who participated on a panel at the Summit, cites four significant results of the meeting:
“The main purpose of the Summit was to have the business community and the governors who were around six years ago get a commitment from all of the current governors to continue to move on standards—whether or not they call it ‘Goals 2000.’
Al
Shanker
“A second thing that came out of the Summit…was that even while they didn't come out for national standards—there was a growing realization that there ought to be some mechanism for cooperation among the states because basically kids ought to learn the same math in California that they do in Alabama.
“Third, they agreed that in order to know what world-class standards are, we really need to have some repository where we can find out about French standards and exams and German standards and exams, and about what the British and the Japanese and the Australians do.…It would also be a place where a state could come and say, ‘How do we compare to other states?’”
“A final point that is important is that the business people said that they would look at transcripts of high schools students as part of the hiring process. But what do transcripts mean right now? They don't mean anything because each district and even each teacher may have a different curriculum. Each teacher has a different set of standards. So there's going to be a call for some form of standard assessment and some form of more common and universal curriculum. Otherwise, this stuff doesn't mean anything.”
Shanker distributed a paper at the conference “Why America Needs a National Research Institute on Educational Standards,” in which he argues that the development of world-class standards, assessments, and benchmarks that are truly competitive with those of other countries requires us to have a thorough knowledge of their curricula, tests, and results.
Specific, widely accepted standards not only provide an equal education to a mobile population but also stamp knowledge with “legitimacy,” says Shanker. “If I'm a fourth-grade student and I have friends in a lot of other teachers' classes and I find that [we're] all being taught something different, I reach the conclusion that what is being taught isn't what California wants me to learn (or the United States of America)…it's what Ms. Jones wants me to learn. Who the hell is Ms. Jones? It can't be that important if every teacher is teaching something different.…
Beverly Sgro is concerned about the proposed “clearinghouse” if it involves the creation of an entirely new entity or organization. She argues that she and Virginia's Governor George Allen hold firmly to local and state authority over education. She says, “We're concerned about any attempt to create standards or curricula at the national level. States can develop their own standards that are appropriate for them. We don't think any new group is necessary.” She points out that conditions in each state are different, and a standard that is appropriate for one may not be right for another. For example, Virginia's recently developed standards require that a student have a working knowledge of algebra in order to graduate. “There are people,” she says, “who are very adamant that now we need to move forward and require geometry as well. And yet we have school systems that are now in the process of trying to convert to algebra and a requirement of algebra for all students. To go in and say that they have to have geometry in the next year would be very problematic for them.”
Beverly
Sgro
Sgro insists that in Virginia “[we] would welcome opportunities to present what we've done” to improve schools and “to see what other states are doing.” If the proposed clearinghouse were to be a “place that we could call and say, ‘Look, we need information on history standards for fifth-graders or elementary school students’…that would be fantastic.” She thinks that the Internet might be a means for states to exchange such information. Each state could have a homepage and put information there “about technology or standards or whatever.”
As for rating states on the quality of their standards, assessments, or educational progress, she thinks the media, which already publishes rankings of colleges and graduate schools, could do the same for the states: “If Newsweek desired to do a major issue on public education in the United States, it's not a far stretch for them to send us a form to fill out and return, maybe by e-mail. Then they extrapolate from that to talk about the major achievements of various states and maybe they [can] even find where there are difficulties and problems, which is not a bad thing because each of our states does have deficiencies.” Sgro admits that creating such a rating would be very difficult because “states vary so much.”
Still, a media-developed rating would have one great advantage. It would “help educate the public, and that's probably the single greatest gain from the Education Summit, in my mind—it has enhanced for the public the fact that education is a major issue in the United States in the eyes of our preeminent business leaders and governors. If there is a mechanism that can continue to make education a top priority in the news and in the minds of citizens, then we, in fact, may begin to tackle some of the really difficult problems in education.”
Standards Writers and Textbook Publishers
Since the mid-1980s, teachers and experts in various disciplines have been working to write standards for every subject, an effort that has required a massive expenditure of time and money. A variety of organizations and groups have grown up to help states and districts develop their own curricula frameworks and assessments. Textbook publishers depend on standards and frameworks to help them design learning materials that states and districts will use. Will the groups that worked so hard to develop the existing standards find their efforts cast aside? In the future, will publishers have to design 50 versions of every text to conform to the curricula of 50 different states? TECHNOS sampled a few opinions.
Rodger
Bybee
Rodger W. Bybee, executive director of the Center for Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Education at the National Research Council, chaired the working group that wrote the content standards for science, which were issued a few months ago. He might be expected to be discouraged by the prospect of every state attempting to recreate what he and his colleagues spent four years developing. He says, however, that they're “not whining.” If nothing else, the Summit underlined the importance of developing learning goals that can stand up against the best in the world. “There's no confusion about whether standards are on the national agenda,” Bybee says. “It's absolutely clear that this conference supported standards.”
Furthermore, the national science education standards have had a lot of support from the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and NASA. “We have confidence that we have a high-quality set of standards,” he says. “They were reviewed by about 7,000 teachers, scientists, and other experts in the final draft. Some states have already developed…standards that follow ours very closely. We don't insist that states adopt our standards, but we'll help them if they ask us. We will work closely with such organizations as the National Science Teachers Association, the Education Commission of the States, and the Council of Chief State School Officers, as they provide support and assistance to the states.”
Christopher
Cross
The Council for Basic Education (CBE) has worked for many years to provide technical assistance and information to large city districts and states developing standards, curricula, and assessments. The organization is currently developing a synthesis of all the voluntary national standards that have been released; and, this June, CBE will host an international working session on criteria for world-class standards. President Christopher T. Cross has substantial concerns about the “entity” or clearinghouse promised by the Summit's Policy Statement. “If you have somebody who is reporting on how states are doing with their standards, it's hard to imagine that same entity [providing] the technical assistance to help states get those standards written, because then you basically have a group reporting on its own work.” In addition, Cross says, “there are several organizations out there who are in a position to be able to provide that kind of technical assistance.…CBE, AFT, the New Standards Project, and others. It would seem to me that it is not right to introduce what's basically another organization between a state that needs help and an organization that can provide that help.”
Peter
McBride, vice president and editor-in-chief at South-Western Educational Publishing,
addressed the prospect of multiple standards from the point of view of an
industry that is always scrambling to keep up with the newest demands of education.
He does not think that new state standards will cause publishers much difficulty:
“The publishing industry has consistently proven itself fairly adept
at interpreting and incorporating major new directions in curriculum and instruction,
but educators need to define or, at least, outline their needs first and then
share those with their publishing partners, with ample lead time to support
new curriculum development.”
McBride points particularly to new technologies to make his job easier. “The printed book is still a long way from dead and gone, but both printing technology and new multimedia formats are allowing publishers great new opportunities to meet changes in instructional practices in exciting ways.…Instructional resources can be developed in any format—electronic, print, on-line, on the back of a duck, whatever. The platter just doesn't matter, and no one is better equipped to serve teachers and kids than the industry that already knows how to do it.”
Hosting
the Summit sessions at IBM Conference Center in Palisades, New York, are IBM
Chairman Louis Gerstner (second from left) and Stanley Litow, Director of
Corporate Support Programs for IBM (right).
Clearinghouse ‘Entity’ Is Key to Summit Issues
Will the governors' commitment to standards, assessments, and accountability in their states fuel 50 flavors of hot air? Or will the pledge produce 50 equally tough, similarly effective documents and activities that raise all of the schools in every state to the level of global competitiveness? The difference between these outcomes may depend on the nature of the “clearinghouse,” which participants pledged to bring into being 90 days after the end of the Summit.
The design of this agency is to be announced at the annual July meeting of the National Governors Association (NGA) in Puerto Rico. Its three-month gestation is reportedly difficult. Conference calls and meetings about a proposed design for this entity began on April 11 and concluded with the meeting of the Executive Committee of the NGA at the end of May.
The Policy Statement—supported unanimously by Summit participants—commits them to designate “an external, independent, nongovermental entity” to facilitate “information sharing and technical assistance” in order to help states “develop standards and assessments, and to ensure these standards and assessments are of high quality and truly world-class.”
This clearinghouse will also help “pool information resources and expertise” and “provide guidance, help, and information to interested states and school districts.” Furthermore, such an “entity” would “measure and report each state's annual progress in setting standards, improving the quality of teaching, incorporating technology, supporting innovation, and proving student achievement” through the use of “a benchmarked assessment.”
It is not clear from the Policy Statement whether one or several different “entities” are to perfrom these functions, or whether this entity will be created as a new agency or simply “designated” as an activity assigned to an existing organization. At the Summit, and in the weeks immediately following, there was so great a divergence of opinion about the breadth of function, structure, and funding of the clearinghouse that it remains to be seen whether the governors will be announcing the birth of a healthy agent for change—or just wishful thinking.
There appears to be general acknowledgment of some of the functions that the entity will need to perform:
- collection and distribution of information voluntarily contributed by the states about their standards, assessments, and accountability plans;
- provision of a ratings, comparison, or benchmarking service for the standards, assessments, and accountability systems across districts and states, and even internationally;
- collection and sharing of information about effective practices;
- identification of technical assistance and staff training resources;
- measures and reports on each state's annual progress.
Three general options have emerged about a structure for carrying out the agreed-upon functions. First, they could be divided up among existing organizations and institutions, ranging from the Council for Basic Education and the New Standards Project, which could undertake the clearinghouse and benchmarking roles, to such publications as U.S. News and World Report and Education Week, which could publicize, rank, or rate states on educational progress and achievements. The Business Round Table and the National Alliance of Business might also fill some of these roles.
Alternatively, the Summit's planning committee could create a new organization to undertake all of the described functions, but to do so, it would have to raise sufficient funding for quality staff and consultants.
A third option—the one that seems to be generally preferred—would combine the first two, assigning specific tasks to existing organizations but establishing the Summit's planning committee as a controlling umbrella organization, the envisioned “entity.” If the committee and NGA approve this option, the planning committee would incorporate and designate a “skeleton staff” and begin fundraising. One of their first mandates would be to identify the best or most promising agencies or organizations to carry out each task. The group might then solicit proposals and estimates from various groups for carrying out specified functions.
Al Shanker, president of the AFT, argues that what is needed is a “place where states could go to look at the standards of other states and the curricula and exams of other countries…a place where states could send their standards and receive an in-depth report as to how those standards compare to the expectations for students in other high-achieving countries…a place that could issue reports that…help us understand what makes some foreign education systems so successful” (“Why America Needs a National Research Institute on Educational Standards”). But Beverly Sgro, Secretary of Education for Virginia, says that she and Governor Allen “don't think a new group is necessary.” They are happy to share information with other states on a voluntary basis, and they would be willing to have each state put its own standards, sample assessments, and progress reports on the Internet. Governor Fordice of Mississippi would prefer to have all functions housed in a single agency, but sees no need to establish a new entity. Extra funding and staffing to an existing organization would work as well.
In any event, at last education—and school reform—has everyone's attention. New and powerful sectors are seriously focusing their efforts on school reform; new voices addressing chronic problems.
The Summit has opened a new dialogue, but its success or failure is linked to the proposed clearinghouse—the “entity” entrusted to carry out its goals.
Extracts from the Policy Statement of the National Education SummitThe following statement was adopted unanimously by participants at the Summit, with each governor and accompanying CEO casting a single vote. 1996 National Education Summit Policy Statement …While we remain committed to implement at the state and local level the education goals adopted by governors following the Charlottesville Summit in 1989, it is clear that simply setting goals is not enough. What We Commit to Do
What Specific Actions We Will Take Business Practices. As business leaders, we commit to actively support the work of the governors….We will clearly communicate to students, parents, schools, and the community the types and levels of skills necessary to meet the workforce needs of the next century and implement hiring practices within one year that will require applicants to demonstrate achievement….We commit to considering the quality of a state's academic standards and student achievement levels as a high-priority factor in determining business-location decisions. We also agree to adopt policies to support parental involvement in their children's education and in improving local school. Finally, we commit to developing and helping implement compatible, inexpensive, and easy-to-use products, services, and software to support teaching. Public Reporting.…We commit to be held accountable for progress made in our respective states.…First, we will establish an external, independent, nongovernmental effort to measure and report each state's annual progress in setting standards, improving the quality of teaching, incorporating technology, supporting innovation, and proving student achievement. To review student academic progress, we will explore the use of a reliable benchmarked assessment. Second, we will produce and widely distribute in each of our individual states an annual report showing progress made by both states and business in meeting our stated commitments….Third, reports will be released at a high-profile televised media announcement in each state, and we will work to coordinate the release nationally…. Information Sharing and Technical Assistance.…We recognize that states and communities will need resources and technical assistance to develop and implement standards and assessments [that are] of high quality and truly world-class….Where appropriate and on a voluntary basis, we commit to work together to pool information resources and expertise to move our states forward on this agenda. We also commit to designate an external, independent, nongovernmental entity to facilitate our work together on these issues, and to provide guidance, help, and information to interested states and school districts…within 90 days…for adoption by the NGA executive committee [and presentation for] endorsement by the NGA at the 1996 annual meeting. Finally, we commit to giving high priority to promoting professional development of educators, including efforts to improve instructional methods that use new technologies to help students achieve high standards. |
Computer illustration by Brenda Grannan.
Christopher Cross' photo courtesy of Mattox Commercial Photographers.
Peter McBride's photo courtesy of Chris D. Minnick.
Photos containing IBM CEO Louis Gerstner courtesy of IBM.
Pat Willis' photo courtesy of Tom Hill.
Sybil Eakin is a freelance writer and editor specializing in information and resources for students, teachers, and others involved in education. She has written and edited materials for the Agency for Instructional Technology, Indiana University, National Educational Service, the Home and School Institute, the Eli Lilly Company, and the City of Bloomington. She lives in Bloomington, Indiana, where she frequently abandons her computer for her garden.