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Debating Naitonal Education Tests: We Need National Standards to Compete
| Article
# : |
19699 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1991 |
2,351 Words |
| Author
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Jerry Hume
William J. "Jerry" Hume is chairman of the board of Basic
American Foods, Inc., director of the Center for Workforce
Preparation and Quality Education, and California's nominee
for the Education Commission of the States. |
The concern about scholastic achievement is not a recent one in the United States. The publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983 sounded the alarm of an impeding educational disaster on a national basis. A multitude of reports since have further critiqued the inadequacies of public education in this country.
During the 1980s, efforts to solve our problems in education primarily took the form of increased funding and state mandates for more rigorous graduation requirements. By the end of the 1980s, test scores indicated marginal or no progress in scholastic achievement. It became obvious that more money and tougher courses were not producing the desired results, so the country began looking for other means to improve its educational performance.
As America looked more closely at test results, it found that its students tested last or next to last when compared with students of other advanced nations. Business leaders, governors, and a number of national studies have questioned whether we can compete internationally with such a poorly educated work force.
By the end of the 1980s, the answer was apparent--business became increasingly unable to find qualified entry-level job applicants. The work place demanded higher-order thinking skills, so those who in the past could expect to hold down well-paying blue collar jobs for a lifetime were no longer needed. Computer-driven equipment and machinery had taken over simple nonskilled jobs. Higher levels of applied technology had begun to require workers who could read, write, calculate, work in groups, and handle responsibility. But increasingly such workers were just not there.
What America did find was that each year its schools were graduating 700,000 functional illiterates and another 700,000 were high school dropouts. In other words, of a population of 3.8 million 18-year-olds, 36 percent either had dropped out of school or were functionally illiterate. And of those students who did graduate, a summary of higher-order thinking skills indicated that only 3-5 percent were functioning at a high level, versus 15-30 percent from competitor countries.
Nothing happens in a democracy until there is a crisis--and it is gradually dawning on segments of the American people that there is indeed a crisis in public education. The national level knows it; the governors' level does; the inner cities are well aware of the problem; and the concern is increasingly shared by
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