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Payzant, NCEE Recommend Changes to American Education

Senior Lecturer Thomas Payzant, former superintendent of the Boston Public Schools, played a significant role in the development of a report released last week calling for major changes to the American education system.

The report entitled, Tough Choice or Tough Times, by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), examines the link between education and the economy, and provides recommendations calling for a major overhaul of the country's education system.

"During the last 15 years, the debate has changed from low skill, low wages to high skill, high wages and now America's challenge is to compete with other countries that have many high skilled people who will work for low wages," Payzant says. "To compete, American workers must have higher skills to earn high wages."

Other members of the 26-person commission included Massachusetts Commissioner of Education David Driscoll; New York Public Schools Chancellor Joel Klein; and Chuck Knapp, director of educational development for the CF Foundation.

When the NCCE released its initial report in 1990, it discussed the early impact of globalization and urged America to adopt international benchmarking standards in education to focus on low skill, low wage jobs. The new--and controversial--report details 10 steps necessary to create a new education system in America.

Included in the recommendations are steps that would prepare many students for community colleges, technical schools, or universities by age 16. "In most countries, the standard for 16-year-olds is higher than what we expect from an 18-year-old graduating high school in America," Payzant says, explaining that a board exam taken during the tenth grade would determine whether students were prepared and had learned enough to enter the next stage of their education.

This step could save money thus providing an opportunity for the U.S. to create a full-service early childhood education system, and pay teachers better, the report claims.

The report revealed that a high percentage of teachers in the U.S. public education come from the lower third of college graduates, unlike many other countries where teachers come from the top third tier. "We can reverse that by changing compensation systems and working conditions so salaries can be dramatically increased," Payzant says of the report's recommendation.

The report also focuses on adult education as an essential piece of improving American education.

"A major percentage of the workforce 15 to 20 years from now will be people who are in the workforce today," Payzant says. Those workers will have to continue to improve their skills to qualify for high wages and be competitive with the global workforce, he says.

Payzant points out that each recommendation was benchmarked against a best practice in countries that compete with the United States. It is important to see the connections among each of the 10 recommendations, he says.

Over the next six months, the commission will be briefing policymakers, researchers and educators on the report, as well as looking for four or five states who are willing to take the first steps necessary to implement the recommendations.

"The standard of living for Americans is at risk unless we prepare students to compete for jobs which demand high skills to receive high wages," Payzant says. "America's competitive edge has been creativity and innovation. America will have serious problems down the road unless our education system prepares students to compete globally with 21st century skills."

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