Panel says problem schools hurt nation’s security

KIMBERLY HEFLING

AP Edu­ca­tion Writer

WASHINGTON — The nation’s secu­rity and eco­nomic pros­per­ity are at risk if America’s schools don’t improve, warns a task force led by for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Con­doleezza Rice and Joel Klein, the for­mer chan­cel­lor of New York City’s school system.

The report, obtained by The Asso­ci­ated Press, cau­tions that far too many schools fail to ade­quately pre­pare stu­dents. “The dom­i­nant power of the 21st cen­tury will depend on human cap­i­tal,” it said. “The fail­ure to pro­duce that cap­i­tal will under­mine Amer­i­can security.”

The task force said the State Depart­ment and U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies face crit­i­cal short­falls in the num­ber of for­eign lan­guage speak­ers, and that fields such as sci­ence, defense and aero­space are at par­tic­u­lar risk because a short­age of skilled work­ers is expected to worsen as baby boomers retire.

Accord­ing to the panel, 75 per­cent of young adults don’t qual­ify to serve in the mil­i­tary because they are phys­i­cally unfit, have crim­i­nal records or inad­e­quate lev­els of edu­ca­tion. That’s in part because 1 in 4 stu­dents fails to grad­u­ate from high school in four years, and a high school diploma or the equiv­a­lent is needed to join the mil­i­tary. But another 30 per­cent of high school grad­u­ates don’t do well enough in math, sci­ence and Eng­lish on an apti­tude test to serve in the mil­i­tary, the report said.

The task force, con­sist­ing of 30 mem­bers with back­grounds in areas such as edu­ca­tion and for­eign affairs, was orga­nized by the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions, a New York-based research and pol­icy orga­ni­za­tion focused on inter­na­tional issues. The report was sched­uled to be released Tuesday.

Too many Amer­i­cans are defi­cient in both global aware­ness and knowl­edge that is “essen­tial for under­stand­ing America’s allies and its adver­saries,” the report concludes.

“Leav­ing large swaths of the pop­u­la­tion unpre­pared also threat­ens to divide Amer­i­cans and under­mines the country’s cohe­sion, con­fi­dence, and abil­ity to serve as a global leader,” the report said.

Rice and Klein said in inter­views that they are encour­aged by efforts to improve schools such as the adop­tion of “com­mon core” stan­dards set in read­ing and math in a vast major­ity of states and the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” com­pe­ti­tion, in which states com­pete for fed­eral money in exchange for more mean­ing­ful teacher evaluations.

But, they added, the pace to improve America’s schools must accelerate.

“The rest of the world is not sit­ting by while we, in a rather delib­er­ate fash­ion, reform the edu­ca­tion sys­tem,” Rice said.

Klein said he hopes the find­ings will prompt dis­cus­sions beyond the edu­ca­tion com­mu­nity that engage those in the defense and for­eign pol­icy estab­lish­ments about how to improve schools.

“I don’t think peo­ple have really thought about the national secu­rity impli­ca­tions and the inabil­ity to have peo­ple who speak the req­ui­site lan­guages who can staff a vol­un­teer mil­i­tary, the kind of morale and human con­vic­tion you need to hold a coun­try together. I don’t think peo­ple have thought about it in those terms,” Klein said.

The panel makes three main recommendations:

—Adopt and expand the com­mon core ini­tia­tive to include skill sets crit­i­cal to national secu­rity such as sci­ence, tech­nol­ogy and for­eign languages;

—Struc­tural changes to pro­vide stu­dents with more choices in where they can go to school, so many stu­dents aren’t stuck in under­per­form­ing schools;

—A national secu­rity readi­ness audit, pre­pared by gov­er­nors work­ing with the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, that can be used to judge whether schools are meet­ing national expec­ta­tions in education.

Not all panel mem­bers agreed with all the task force find­ings. One dis­sent­ing opin­ion said a pro­posed national audit will only increase the pres­sure to focus on stan­dard­ized tests and that money would be bet­ter used to improve the need­i­est school dis­tricts. That opin­ion was issued by Car­ole Arti­giani, founder of Global Kids Inc., and agreed to by Stephen Walt, an inter­na­tional affairs pro­fes­sor at Har­vard, and Randi Wein­garten, pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Teachers.

Wein­garten, in another dis­sent, said that some ele­ments of the report under­mine schools, and that school choice options such as vouch­ers and char­ters, which use pub­lic funds but are run by a third party, have not proven to be sus­tain­able or to improve schools. Arti­giani and Walt sup­ported that argument.

In an inter­view, Wein­garten said it doesn’t make sense to pro­vide an “opt-out” option with school choice, when pub­lic schools should be strength­ened instead.

Posted by AP News on Mar 19 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.