U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says that desperately needed education reform in the United States is "this generation's Moon shot." Of course, that's precisely how Tom Friedman frames our equally desperate need for energy reform. Indeed, desperate times require desperate analogies. Duncan spoke to a group of us at the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday.
Sure, the U.S. remains the world's undisputed higher education leader. However, Yale President Richard Levin's article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs suggests it's just a matter of a decade or two before China catches up. Meanwhile, Duncan cited a sobering litany of U.S. K-12 worldwide performance statistics. For example, we're 24th of 29 nations in one study of high school math proficiency and 21st of 30 in a comparable study of science proficiency. Do we truly realize as citizens that the U.S. is suffering a 27 percent high school dropout rate, that as many as 40 percent of our college students need remedial help, and that we rank 10th in college completion globally, according to Duncan?
Remember that '80s music video in which Huey Lewis plunges his head into a sink full of ice water? Well, somehow, we the people need just such a wake-up call. Every second we spend on peripheral "wedge" issues in this country, to serve narrow political agendas, we're sapping our ability and willingness to solve the truly monumental challenges before us, such as real education reform.
In that context, Secretary Duncan speaks of the Obama Administration's "cradle to career" vision for education. Great! It's nice rhetoric, as is his welcome alignment of cultural awareness and language proficiency with the "smart power" movement, but is it really achievable in four or even eight years? Instead, I'd prefer that the Administration be a little less grandiose in packaging concepts and more focused, for example, on attacking ten programmatic reforms that are needed before we can ever credibly dream of a "cradle to career" vision.
Sure, the U.S. remains the world's undisputed higher education leader. However, Yale President Richard Levin's article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs suggests it's just a matter of a decade or two before China catches up. Meanwhile, Duncan cited a sobering litany of U.S. K-12 worldwide performance statistics. For example, we're 24th of 29 nations in one study of high school math proficiency and 21st of 30 in a comparable study of science proficiency. Do we truly realize as citizens that the U.S. is suffering a 27 percent high school dropout rate, that as many as 40 percent of our college students need remedial help, and that we rank 10th in college completion globally, according to Duncan?
Remember that '80s music video in which Huey Lewis plunges his head into a sink full of ice water? Well, somehow, we the people need just such a wake-up call. Every second we spend on peripheral "wedge" issues in this country, to serve narrow political agendas, we're sapping our ability and willingness to solve the truly monumental challenges before us, such as real education reform.
In that context, Secretary Duncan speaks of the Obama Administration's "cradle to career" vision for education. Great! It's nice rhetoric, as is his welcome alignment of cultural awareness and language proficiency with the "smart power" movement, but is it really achievable in four or even eight years? Instead, I'd prefer that the Administration be a little less grandiose in packaging concepts and more focused, for example, on attacking ten programmatic reforms that are needed before we can ever credibly dream of a "cradle to career" vision.