U.S. EDUCATION--THE TASK BEFORE US

 As the crisis in American education continues it is becoming a national crisis¾one that affects our democratic system, our values and our way of life. As it persists, the gap between what we stand for as a nation and what we really are is widening. A generation is growing up unprepared for citizenship, work and family life.

We have problems throughout the system¾at all levels, with all students. At one end of the spectrum, a huge number of students leave school, either as dropouts or graduates, with such low levels of achievement that their employment prospects are very poor. Many have never overcome the overwhelming social problems they brought with them to school. At the other end of the spectrum, our schools produce among the smallest percentage of high achieving graduates in the industrialized countries. Our average achieving students compare poorly with their counterparts abroad. No policies, whether federal, state or local, have yet successfully addressed the problem of substantially improving the educational attainment of all of our children.

This is not, as has been suggested, the result of "decline" from some Golden Age, since if a Golden Age ever existed it existed only for the few. Yet, those who have written recently to say that all is well with American education are not right either. It is true that our schools are performing, in most respects, better than they ever performed before. They are educating more students and more difficult students to levels attained in earlier times by only a small and favored group. But success is not assured merely by doing better than we did in the past.

The real issue is that our schools are not doing as well as they need to do to prepare the citizens of a democratic society and the productive workers of a world-competitive economy. We are simply not doing well in comparison to other industrialized countries.

To be sure, comparisons with other countries are difficult to make. They are imperfect. Some unfairly compare a large (and broadly representative) group of U.S. students who are still in school with a smaller, more select group elsewhere. Nevertheless, the many careful comparisons that have been made show other countries doing much better with all groups of students¾those in the top, middle and lowest achievement groups. There are five tasks before us:

• We must continue the efforts to create a different kind of learning institution to replace the traditional school.

• We must improve our traditional schools so that they are at least as effective as the traditional schools in other industrialized countries.

• We should strive to place both these new and traditional schools in a clear system-wide framework where high, national (not federal) standards shape curriculum, where the curriculum to be taught is known to all stakeholders, and where outcomes are set and measured to determine successes and failures. This framework should define policies at the federal, state and local levels.

•  We must convince the American people that the differences in the support for education and children in other countries¾that the higher percentage of GNP they spend on education, family and health supports¾is part of the reason for their success.

•  We must continue to fight against public monies being used to support private schools over which taxpayers have no control.

To pursue these goals, we must do the following:

Create A Different Kind of School

AFT locals throughout the country continue to support major restructuring efforts. These must continue. They represent our greatest hope for making a major educational breakthrough. Schools which require children to sit most of the day, learn mainly by listening, learn at the same rate and in the same way, rarely succeed with a majority of students. This model of schooling has remained relatively unchanged for over a century. A new model must be developed.

Our experience has been that school based management and shared decision-making are necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for school change. By themselves, these innovations don't necessarily lead to school improvement. We have strong evidence that these arrangements and other components of restructuring will not succeed unless we first agree on what all students must know and be able to do. (School based management and shared decision making are essential in deciding how best to meet academic standards which have been adopted.) Only then will we know what faculty must know and be able to teach. Having agreed upon what students should learn, we must develop school structures and teaching techniques that take into account the many obstacles that now impede student learning. In transforming our schools, we should learn from the practices of school systems abroad and we should incorporate into our reforms the kinds of supports we know students and teachers need; including:

•  Agreement by management and union to grant a school that is undergoing serious restructuring efforts, freedom from many regulations over a long period of time.

• Substantial time for staff planning, training and cooperation.

• Professionalization of teachers so that they are capable of using all the alternatives to whole-class teaching, including team teaching, cooperative learning, peer tutoring and discussion seminars.

• Staff training in the educational use of technology¾not just computers, but also audiotapes, video and fax.

• Pre-service preparation and staff development that will lead to higher levels of subject teaching skill mastery than have been required up until now.

• An opportunity for school staff to explore alternative school models that combine all or some of these elements, such as the German Koln-Holweide model, Montessori schools, the Key School, some schools featured by the Coalition of Essential Schools, and the one-room schoolhouse.

Improve Traditional Schools: Use Lessons from the Systems of Other Industrialized Countries

Most of the schools in other countries are performing better than ours. They may have some features we identify with restructuring, but generally they are traditional. This demonstrates that those not engaged in developing new types of schools can work to create successful traditional schools. In fact, getting Americans to adopt the key elements of these traditional schools is no less a revolutionary task than school restructuring. We need to work on both-substantially improving the schools we have while at the same time working to create a new model.

What GM and the UAW are doing with cars is very similar. In developing the new Saturn model, UAW and GM are mounting a great effort to create a car that can successfully compete using a new manufacturing process¾one that does not resemble the old factory system. While this effort has been going on and is successful, GM has not stopped making its other cars. Many buyers still wanted the traditional models. So GM continued to improve them, too. The changeover from our current schools to those of the future will be evolutionary in the same way.

In improving our traditional schools, we should learn from our school system and those of other industrialized countries.

• Schools in other countries are run by professionals with relatively little regular interference by laypeople or school boards.

• Schools in other countries generally have a national curriculum. Consequently, teacher training, textbooks and assessments are much more effective than ours because they can be geared to a specific curriculum. Moreover, students know that as they go from teacher to teacher or school to school, there will be continuity.

• Assessments, at least for the college bound, are curriculum based and challenging. As a result, "teaching to the test" is a constructive way to spend class time.

• Because other countries produce many more students who reach the highest levels of achievement, there is an adequate supply of highly educated people to staff positions in business, government, the military and educational institutions. These nations can guarantee that all classrooms are staffed by highly knowledgeable, skilled teachers.

•  A number of other countries group students by achievement level. In the U.S., student grouping has usually had negative effects on students because students in the "slow" groups are not given challenging work. In other countries, student grouping has positive effects because all students are given challenging work. Also, U.S. student grouping often starts in the first grade with reading groups. Other countries avoid any grouping until much later. Germany starts grouping earlier than most¾in the 5th grade. All others do so in later grades, and all group students in high school. Also, in the U.S. there is danger that grouping of students could be used not for educational purposes but to increase racial separation.

• Good systems in other countries have clearly visible consequences for student performance. There are high college entry standards and clear employment standards. Since success is rewarded in all tracks, all students are expected to work hard¾and their teachers and parents push them.

• Schools are relatively safe and free of many of the disruptions of U.S. schools because the legal system supports school regulations needed to maintain a proper educational atmosphere.

• School systems in other countries have much smaller school bureaucracies. In many cases, principals and other supervisors continue to teach.

If traditional U.S. schools are to reach the attainment levels of our industrial competitors, we must try to incorporate these practices, or reasonable equivalents, into our schools. With respect to the above points, these are possible U.S. responses.

1. Experiment with different forms of school governance that free schools from micromanagement by school boards and superintendents. Some of these are discussed in the recent report of the Twentieth Century Fund. There should be experimentation with various systems of management recommended in the report.

2. States and districts should adopt the best curricula and curriculum frameworks available and require everyone in the system to work faithfully within them. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics developed such a curriculum. California has developed outstanding curriculum frameworks in history and language arts. Instead of trying to develop separate curricula in each school, district or state, we should use the best of what is available. At the same time we should support national and state efforts to produce new and better curricula and develop common national standards.

3. We should use the best kinds of assessments available. As one example, California has developed assessments based on its curriculum frameworks. Advanced placement exams, the International Baccalaureate and the older New York State Regents examinations should be used as models while new ones are developed that relate to new, improved curriculum frameworks. AFT should support the commitment of federal, state and private funds for the development of a national system of assessments¾one that also includes assessments for vocational and other non-academic track students.

4. Since teacher standards are always related to student standards, we necessarily will need to raise the knowledge and skill levels of many teachers when we raise student standards. While a smaller percentage of U.S. teachers are now adequate to the tasks ahead than in many other countries, we do have a great deal of exceptional talent, and, even when shortcomings are evident, there aren't any replacements with the needed skills, knowledge and talents available. So, we should encourage some of the same strategies used in the private sector when faced with similar problems. One answer is teaming and sharing skills¾with 2, 3, 4, or 5 teachers working together in such a way that all students have access to at least one teacher who is top-notch in each area. In some cases technology can help. We should also support "pay for knowledge." This means that, in the future, salary differentials might be based on acquiring the knowledge and skills to teach in an area of shortage. Or, they might be granted to those receiving certification by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which would indicate that a teacher had reached the highest levels of competence in a given field.

5. We need to move away from the ideological debate about student grouping. In fact, there are successful examples of both heterogeneous and homogeneous systems. The basic issue is to determine what practices are needed to make the system work for all students. Heterogeneous grouping can work d there is relatively little teacher talk and if the school is organized around individual student work or by subgroups within the class, much like the one-room schoolhouse or the workings of a Boy Scout troop. Or, as Harold Stevenson and James Stigler have shown in their book, The Learning Gap, whole class direct instruction can also be effective with heterogeneous groups¾when very carefully team-prepared lessons are adhered to by all teachers who, instead of trying to cover a great deal, work with the class to carefully review how each student solved a single problem, the different ways of reaching successful answers and the common pitfalls which led to mistakes. However, if teachers are going to talk a great deal and cover much ground, classes must be grouped homogeneously so that students can follow together. Where there is grouping, we should follow the practices of other countries. Students are grouped on the basis of achievement¾a combination of effort, ability and level of development and not on the basis of presumed innate ability. Students are not grouped any earlier than the 5th grade, and, for the most part, not at all in elementary school. At the elementary level all students are given the same work and are pressed and are helped to do ft. At the point where students are grouped, all students in all groups are given challenging work which is designed to have all learn to the maximum of their abilities. Students who do exceptionally well are moved to more challenging groups and, in the best situations, student grouping may be different in each subject to reflect different subject strengths and weaknesses.

6. AFT should support incentive systems to increase the motivation of students to work hard and achieve in school. We should favor the development of world-class college entry standards over a given period of time. The college graduation rates of other countries lead us to believe that we would not reduce the number of college graduates if we maintained high standards. There should be provisions for ongoing education for those students who do not meet college requirements, and it must be possible for those who do not reach college entry standards by the time they are 18, to meet them at a later time. We also favor the establishment of school-to-work links and legislation which would involve all businesses in providing on-the-job apprenticeships and training programs for all employees.

Extrinsic incentives are needed, but intrinsic incentives are most important. Anticipated college and employment standards are not likely to motivate elementary and middle school students. For them, among the strongest incentives is recognition within a group small enough so that all know each other¾something which is further made possible when teachers and students remain with each other for a number of years to develop close relationships.

7. AFT should engage in ongoing meetings with school, parent, civil rights and other groups in an effort to modify current laws and/or practices which make U.S. schools the least safe and most disorderly in the industrialized world.

Implement Public Policies that Support Schools

Educational results do not depend only on what teachers and schools do. Much of the success of other countries is due to the social and economic context within which education takes place.

• In other industrialized countries the amount spent on the education of children is about the same throughout the country. In other industrial countries the amount spent on a child's education does not depend on local real estate values or the wealth of a local community. Most other countries have national systems in which the same is spent on all children with the exception of additional funds that are provided for children with special needs. Even where there are some differences, they are very small by American standards. Jonathan Kozol has dramatically portrayed the shameful conditions in thousands of our worst schools. Even if it's not possible in our system to reach equality in school spending, at the very least we need a set of high minimum standards, that includes special compensation for the most deprived, so that no child is denied an education.

• Other countries spend more on elementary and secondary education than we do. We need to spend comparable amounts.

• The income gap between the top 10% and bottom 10% is greater in the U.S. than elsewhere. This translates into different educational chances for students.

• National health care systems in other countries and child and family leave policies provide a system of support which improves school chances.

We do not propose to relieve our schools or our profession of the responsibility for doing better; but we recognize that even if we in education were to do everything as well as others do, without these other external impacts our results are likely to remain worse than those of our competitors.

Monitor the Changes

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) should be adequately funded to be able to continue its valuable sample assessments. They are an important, and vital indicator of our nation's educational performance. Increased funding for NAEP would permit more essay, performance and open-ended questions as well as more regular assessments in those areas now rarely tested.

Improve We Must

We face a fight for the very existence of public education. In order to defeat privatization and voucher schemes, we need to do the following:

• Educate our members and the general public as to the potential dangers to our society if schools in the future were to be organized on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion and class.

• Disseminate information which shows that private and parochial schools: a) have students from higher socioeconomic groups; b) reject students who are difficult; and c) still don't produce results which are much better than the public schools.

• Analyze and take seriously the reasons why parents remove students from public schools so that we can address their concerns with aggressive retention efforts.

• In order to reduce the pressure for private school choice, we should increase choice in public schools.

Since voucher or private school choice plans are under consideration, we must demand freedom from all but essential laws and regulations covering civil rights, health, safety and quality standards. And we must demand that whatever regulations are deemed to be necessary and in the public interest must also be required of any non-public schools whose students are publicly funded. The theory of school competition will certainly not work if public schools are saddled with unnecessary unpopular rules while private schools are not.

We should strive to incorporate into public schools two of the elements of private and parochial school education which are most attractive: the ability to separate out students who are consistently so troublesome as to prevent others from learning, smaller class size and often the requirement that students take more academic courses.

We need to return to the idea of the common school: the idea that children of all races, religions, classes and national backgrounds should get a common education and set of values so that they can learn to live together in a diverse democratic society. This means an emphasis on history, civics, democracy and commonly shared and held values. It means learning about the contributions of all peoples to our multicultural society. It means teaching history accurately, with pride in our national achievements, but also awareness of our past sins and present shortcomings. But ft means opposition to those social studies programs which pit groups against each other, stress differences and conflict.

We must also vastly increase our political efforts in opposition to vouchers as well as our cooperative school improvement efforts with business and other groups. Still, we must face the possibility¾even the probability¾that soon, somewhere, in some state, one of these schemes will pass. AFT should prepare materials on how public schools can effectively compete should such a system be instituted.

A strong public school system is essential for our democracy. To support our public education system we will dedicate ourselves to oppose politically all efforts to use public monies for private schools and to engage in strong and ongoing efforts to create new types of schools and vastly improve existing ones.