I note with some interest the ongoing debate about what should or should not be contained in a “stimulus” package. I am not an economist, so I leave it to people far smarter than me to determine what investments will or will not create jobs and stimulate our economy. But this much I know. If we don’t improve our schools, if we don’t prepare our young people to compete and succeed in the 21st century, none of this matters. We can appropriate a trillion dollars, two trillion dollars, three trillion dollars, we can improve our infrastructure, we can create tax incentives, we can spend, spend, spend…….but if we don’t adequately invest in education, the America that we know will be lost.
We will lose our status as the world leading global superpower.
Our universities will no longer be the global centers of research and innovation.
Our companies will no longer produce the goods and services that fuel the global economy.
And we will be in very real danger of creating a permanent underclass.
On what we’re now referring to as “Bloody Monday,” over 71,000 more job cuts were announced. This brings the total number of announced job cuts to over 200,000 this year. This is a stunning number. A tragic number. These are 200,000 lives that have been, or will be, irrevocably changed.
And yet…
Each year, approximately 1 million children drop out of high school. Right now, 1 child drops out of school every 26 seconds. Right now, the graduation rate in our 50 largest urban centers hovers around 50%.
Right now, there are more African-American men going to jail than to college.
What about these children? Who is fighting for them? Where will they go? If Microsoft is laying off 5000 highly skilled people, where will the young men and women who don’t even have a high school diploma work? How will they ever participate fully in the American Dream? What’s to become of them?
This is not just a problem. This is a national crisis. And yet, there doesn’t seem to be the sense of urgency about addressing these horrendous educational outcomes as there seems to be about fixing other areas of our economy. But the strength of our economy depends on the strength of our businesses, large and small, and the strength of our businesses depends, to a large extent, on the state of our schools.
Baby-boomers are retiring, taking their skills and knowledge with them. The result is a widening gap between the skills required by businesses today and the skills of new entrants in the workforce.
A recent report by The American Diploma Project states: “The [high school] diploma has lost its value because what it takes to earn one is disconnected from what it takes for graduates to compete successfully beyond high school—either in the classroom or in the workplace. Re-establishing the value of the diploma will require the creation of an inextricable link between high school exit expectations and the intellectual challenges that graduates invariably will face in credit bearing college courses or in high-performance, high-growth jobs.”
Employers echo this sentiment. The Conference Board, the Corporate Voices for Working Families, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and the Society for Human Resource Management conducted an in-depth study of the corporate perspective on the readiness of new entrants into the U.S. workforce by level of educational attainment. The study includes results from both an in-depth survey conducted during April and May 2006 and interviews with a sampling of a dozen HR and other senior executives. Respondents were asked to identify the skills they considered “very important” to success in the workplace. The skills rated as “very important” were: (1) professionalism/work ethic; (2) oral and written communications; (3) teamwork/collaboration; (4) critical thinking/problem solving; (5) reading comprehension; (6) English language (spoken); (7) ethics and social responsibility and (8) information technology application. The respondents were then asked to rate the skill level of new entrants by grade level. New entrants’ skill level could be rated as “excellent,” “adequate” or “deficient.”
Four year college graduates were deemed “deficient” in written communications, writing in English and leadership. Two year college graduates and technical school graduates were deemed “deficient” in written communications, writing in English, lifelong learning/self direction, creativity/innovation, critical thinking/problem solving, oral communications, ethics and social responsibility. However, high school graduates were deemed “deficient” in every one of the “very important” skills necessary for workforce success.
The implications are obvious. As important as job creation is, improving our schools and ensuring that current and future generations of students are prepared to compete and succeed in the global economy is just as important. So politics aside, President Obama is to be commended for making increased funding to education a part of the stimulus package. An investment in education is not one of those “good ideas” that has a laudable purpose, but should wait. Urgent action is needed now. Because if our schools fail, and many of them are failing, then our country will fail.
The stimulus package passed the house and is now before the Senate. The political debate is heating up about what should be in and what should be cut from the package. But we must fight for our children, for our future and for our schools. Don’t be silent. We must let our politicians and policymakers know that the money earmarked for education must not be cut. In fact, dedicated funding for modernizing our schools and creating 21st century learning environments for all of our students should be made a permanent part of our economic recovery plan.
Because an investment in education is the ultimate stimulus plan.
We will lose our status as the world leading global superpower.
Our universities will no longer be the global centers of research and innovation.
Our companies will no longer produce the goods and services that fuel the global economy.
And we will be in very real danger of creating a permanent underclass.
On what we’re now referring to as “Bloody Monday,” over 71,000 more job cuts were announced. This brings the total number of announced job cuts to over 200,000 this year. This is a stunning number. A tragic number. These are 200,000 lives that have been, or will be, irrevocably changed.
And yet…
Each year, approximately 1 million children drop out of high school. Right now, 1 child drops out of school every 26 seconds. Right now, the graduation rate in our 50 largest urban centers hovers around 50%.
Right now, there are more African-American men going to jail than to college.
What about these children? Who is fighting for them? Where will they go? If Microsoft is laying off 5000 highly skilled people, where will the young men and women who don’t even have a high school diploma work? How will they ever participate fully in the American Dream? What’s to become of them?
This is not just a problem. This is a national crisis. And yet, there doesn’t seem to be the sense of urgency about addressing these horrendous educational outcomes as there seems to be about fixing other areas of our economy. But the strength of our economy depends on the strength of our businesses, large and small, and the strength of our businesses depends, to a large extent, on the state of our schools.
Baby-boomers are retiring, taking their skills and knowledge with them. The result is a widening gap between the skills required by businesses today and the skills of new entrants in the workforce.
A recent report by The American Diploma Project states: “The [high school] diploma has lost its value because what it takes to earn one is disconnected from what it takes for graduates to compete successfully beyond high school—either in the classroom or in the workplace. Re-establishing the value of the diploma will require the creation of an inextricable link between high school exit expectations and the intellectual challenges that graduates invariably will face in credit bearing college courses or in high-performance, high-growth jobs.”
Employers echo this sentiment. The Conference Board, the Corporate Voices for Working Families, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and the Society for Human Resource Management conducted an in-depth study of the corporate perspective on the readiness of new entrants into the U.S. workforce by level of educational attainment. The study includes results from both an in-depth survey conducted during April and May 2006 and interviews with a sampling of a dozen HR and other senior executives. Respondents were asked to identify the skills they considered “very important” to success in the workplace. The skills rated as “very important” were: (1) professionalism/work ethic; (2) oral and written communications; (3) teamwork/collaboration; (4) critical thinking/problem solving; (5) reading comprehension; (6) English language (spoken); (7) ethics and social responsibility and (8) information technology application. The respondents were then asked to rate the skill level of new entrants by grade level. New entrants’ skill level could be rated as “excellent,” “adequate” or “deficient.”
Four year college graduates were deemed “deficient” in written communications, writing in English and leadership. Two year college graduates and technical school graduates were deemed “deficient” in written communications, writing in English, lifelong learning/self direction, creativity/innovation, critical thinking/problem solving, oral communications, ethics and social responsibility. However, high school graduates were deemed “deficient” in every one of the “very important” skills necessary for workforce success.
The implications are obvious. As important as job creation is, improving our schools and ensuring that current and future generations of students are prepared to compete and succeed in the global economy is just as important. So politics aside, President Obama is to be commended for making increased funding to education a part of the stimulus package. An investment in education is not one of those “good ideas” that has a laudable purpose, but should wait. Urgent action is needed now. Because if our schools fail, and many of them are failing, then our country will fail.
The stimulus package passed the house and is now before the Senate. The political debate is heating up about what should be in and what should be cut from the package. But we must fight for our children, for our future and for our schools. Don’t be silent. We must let our politicians and policymakers know that the money earmarked for education must not be cut. In fact, dedicated funding for modernizing our schools and creating 21st century learning environments for all of our students should be made a permanent part of our economic recovery plan.
Because an investment in education is the ultimate stimulus plan.
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