Bob Wise on the Future of Education

OurBlook interview with Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education

Many people in the United States are highly concerned about improving the quality of education. They believe schools are underfunded and students are underperforming, and some have shown their dismay by joining the voucher and charter school movements. What do you think is the state of education in America ... its strengths and weaknesses?

BW: The general state of K–12 education in this nation includes a lot of people working very hard to provide quality education, but they are finding more and more that they are being held back by working in an aged delivery model; it’s a bit like trying to get the same results from a 10-year-old cell phone that you would expect from today’s Smartphones. While some strategic investments are needed, I’m not interested in making an already dysfunctional system more expensive by spending money in the same way.

Consider high schools. In the past, Title I money ... the largest source of federal funding for low-income school districts ... has been disproportionately directed to the earlier grades and has done little to serve high school students and their needs. While the funds have helped spur gains in student achievement in the early years, there has been little to no improvement in grades 9–12. The Alliance for Excellent Education (the Alliance) advocates for a greater focus at the secondary level, especially at the high schools that routinely see less than 60 percent of entering freshmen make it to their senior year three years later. These schools total nearly two thousand across the country and account for more than half of the nation’s dropouts, yet they receive little in terms of federal dollars or reform efforts.

We know where these schools are and how to fix them. Already there are reform efforts underway in some low-performing high schools that are proving successful in improving student achievement and increasing graduation rates. The Alliance supports drawing attention to and funding the efforts that are proving to be successful while abandoning the practices that have proven to be outdated or inefficient. Given current local, state and federal budget shortfalls, the last thing we want to do is feed money into an existing system that we agree largely needs upgrading.

What are the goals of the educational system, and are they what you think they should be?

BW: The goal of the education system should be to gradate all students from high school ready for careers and college. Currently that is far from the case. In 2009, more than 1.2 million students nationwide did not graduate from high school. Of the students who do graduate every year, almost half are unprepared to succeed in college-level classes or modern careers. If all students graduated ready for college, the nation could save almost $1.4 billion a year in community college remediation costs and lost earnings.

The nation’s gains in educational achievement are intrinsically tied to its gains in economic wealth. According to a recent study conducted by the Alliance and funded by State Farm®, cutting the dropout rate in half for just one high school class in the nation’s 45 largest metro areas would mean an additional $4.1 billion in earnings in an average year, an additional $2.8 billion in spending, and another $1 billion in investments. Reforming our nation’s high schools is a goal not only for the education community but also for the nation’s communities at large.

How has the major school reform movement…No Child Left Behind ... impacted either positively or negatively the educational system? Should it be continued or scrapped? Are there are improvements that could be made?

BW: The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is the current version of the Elementary and Secondary School Act (ESEA), which was first signed into law in 1965. Enacted in 2001, NCLB has played an important role in highlighting achievement gaps, but it has steadily proven to be inadequate in providing sufficient remedies and flexibility. Ten years later, NCLB is a compact disc in an iPod world; it needs to be updated so that it prioritizes high school students, particularly the six million students who are most at risk of dropping out of school each year.

High school students need to graduate college and career ready, rather than just proficient in basic skills. This is a goal that the Obama administration highlighted in its March 14 proposal to overhaul ESEA. The reauthorization should hold states, districts and schools accountable for achieving this target by holding them responsible for reporting graduation rates as well as test scores. These entities should also set a goal of graduating 90 percent of their students from high school and make gradual but significant improvement toward that goal. It is also important that the new version of the law supports states and districts in using student data to make decisions regarding the best reform and intervention methods. And lastly, the federal funding stream must be strengthened at the secondary level to make all these advancements possible.

One of your concerns is performance of U.S. 15-year-olds on the international PISA scholastic achievement test, and another is how the U.S. has fallen from the top of the international ranks in high school and college graduation rates. What comments do you wish to make about these?

BW: The United States once was No. 1 in high school and college graduation rates. This is no longer the case. Among 55- to 64-year-olds, the United States ranks first in the world in percentage of high school graduates. But among 25- to 34-year-olds, the United States drops to ninth place. In just the past decade, the United States has gone from second to 15th in college graduation rates among developed nations. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, nearly 90 percent of the highest-paying and fastest-growing jobs require some postsecondary training. In today’s global economy, America’s students must be able to participate with the same level of global skills as their international peers.

During the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, I reported on the international competition that American students engage in every day and I discussed how the United States’ 15-year-olds performed on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) as compared to other nations. Those videos can be found here. The basic takeaway is that the United States is lagging behind other top-performing countries in educational attainment. However, relatively small improvements in student performance can have large impacts on a nation’s future economic well-being. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, if the United States were to improve its PISA test scores by a minimal 25 points over the next 20 years, it could benefit from a long-term economic GDP gain of over $40 trillion.

How might social media and ever-changing technology improve classrooms and the learning environment for teachers and students? How might they be impeding the educational progress?

BW: Online learning offers one solution to three major crises currently facing the U.S. education system. First, our nation stands to lose a large number of teachers over the next few years due to low retention rates and large-scale retirements. Online learning can strengthen the workforce and bring high-quality content to reach students wherever they live.

Another major challenge is the looming funding cliff for state and local school districts. The current recession does not allow for continued education spending increases in most state budgets. Investing in online learning offers cost-efficient benefits such as reusing online course content, seamlessly connecting teachers to students across many schools, and spreading similar costs over multiple learning sites.

The last issue that online learning helps schools address is improving student achievement and increasing high school and college graduation rates. According to a 2009 U.S. Department of Education study, students who took all or part of their classes online did better than students in face-to-face classrooms, and the advantage was even stronger in blended classrooms than in online-only classrooms.

One caution to consider is the level of accountability; the Alliance believes that policymakers can reasonably hold the online education process to higher learning standards than they can the traditional education system.

What do you see as the future of education in the United States … will it get better or worse?

BW: I am confident that education in the United States can get better, but there is much work to be done. Frankly, if the United States is to remain an economic powerhouse, we don’t have a choice. Many of this nation’s well-educated baby boomers are retiring and their positions in the workforce will need to be filled. At the same time, the nation’s demographics are shifting dramatically with the U.S. labor force becoming more diverse. By 2050, minorities are projected to represent the majority of the population. Unfortunately, the American education system currently does a poor job of educating many students of color.

Across the country, about 70 percent of high school students graduate in the expected four years, but the numbers are much lower for minority populations. Only 55 percent of Hispanic, 51 percent of African American, and 50 percent of Native American students graduate on time as compared to 76 percent of white students.

If the current achievement gap could be eliminated, local, state and national economies would benefit significantly. A study by the Alliance finds that if the nation’s high schools and colleges were to raise the graduation rates of Hispanic, African American and Native American students to the levels of white students by 2020, the increase in personal income across the nation would add more than $310 billion to the U.S. economy.

Is there anything else you’d like to say about any aspect of this topic?

BW: The combination of the current economic crisis, lackluster student outcomes, and future high skill demands for our workforce mean that dramatic policy decisions must be made at the federal, state and local levels within the next two years. NCLB expired two years ago; failure by the Congress to reauthorize ESEA this year will relegate students and educators to additional years of working in an antiquated educational system. Forty states undertook major changes in their applications for Race to the Top funding; only enacting ESEA this year can continue that momentum.

(Since joining the Alliance in 2005, Mr. Wise has appeared on programs such as "Lou Dobbs Tonight" (CNN), the "Charlie Rose Show" (PBS), "PBS NewsHour," the "Diane Rehm Show" (NPR) and "Washington Journal" (C-SPAN). He was governor of West Virginia from 2001-2005, during which time he helped enact and fund the PROMISE Scholarship program, which has helped thousands of West Virginia high school graduates continue their education in the Mountain State. He also helped pass salary bonuses for teachers who achieve National Board certification and, as a result, the rate of certified teachers in the state tripled. Before that, he was a congressman for 18 years. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Duke and a JD from Tulane University School of Law. He has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.)

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