Many of you are familiar with Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat.  Friedman’s thesis in The World is Flat is simple.  U.S. students need to wake up to the fact that they are likely to be out-competed by brighter and hungrier students from China, India, and many smaller countries around the globe.

If Friedman raised the call to arms, the recently-released report of the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, titled Tough Choices or Tough Times  provides the battle campaign needed to meet this challenge.  This report, which has generated little press buzz since its release in December, is a blueprint for revolution dressed in mundane prose and understated rhetoric.

While the report has none of Friedman’s flair for breaking down complex issues into an easily-understood framework, it is powerful stuff.  The Commission itself is a most impressive group, led by Marc Tucker, President of the National Center on Education and the Economy, and one of the foremost national authorities on educational change.  It includes two former Secretaries of Education, Roderick Paige and Richard Riley, Thomas Payzant, noted former Superintendent of schools in Boston, Joel Klein, Chancellor of the New York City schools, and several distinguished educators.  

They paint a bleak picture of the current course of U.S. education:  “If we continue on our current course, and the number of nations outpacing us in the education race continues to gain at its current rate, the American standard of living will steadily fall…  There is not enough money available at any level of our intergovernmental system to fix this problem….  We can get where we must go only by changing the system itself.”

Changing the system is what this Report sets out to do.  To give you a flavor of what this would involve:  The Commission would attack the “colossal inefficiency” of the American education system by designing a new approach built on a set of State Board Qualifying Exams targeted at the tenth grade.  All students would have to pass these exams before they could go on to a college or vocational track at an accelerated pace.  Because many students would be moving to alternate tracks after tenth grade, K-12 system costs would be significantly reduced.

Believing that attracting and retaining high quality teachers is critical, the Commission would restructure the way teachers are compensated, moving toward a significantly higher pay scale based on performance.  The trade-off for higher compensation would be to abolish the current tenure provisions that make it very difficult to remove non-performing teachers.  Teacher licensing systems would be completely overhauled so that licensure would be based not on courses taken, but on demonstrating superior teaching ability.

Moving to governance issues, the Commission recommends a complete restructuring in which school districts are composed entirely of contract schools, something akin to charter schools.  These schools would have significant autonomy.  The School Board’s role would principally be limited to ensuring each school delivers on the educational commitments under its contract.

There are several other far-reaching recommendations designed to expand early childhood education, provide additional support for disadvantaged students, and develop clearer, more effective standards.  These recommendations, in themselves, are enough to send a tsunami through the education community, but there is more.  Recognizing that the literacy of many of our lower-skilled workers is well below that of other developed countries, the Commission recommends that the federal government provide free services to all who have completed ninth grade to enable them to meet the literacy standards embodied in the new state qualifying exams.  They envision a nationwide effort in which two to three million adults each year enter this program to improve their literacy.

The Commission also proposes the creation of Personal Competitive Accounts (PCAs), modeled after the GI Bill.  These would be tax free education accounts established for every child at birth funded by modest annual donations by the Federal Government, and voluntary supplemental contributions from the individuals themselves or from employers.  These accounts could be used to finance any career-related program at any accredited institution.

 It is rare that such Commissions are bold enough to recommend strong medicine.  The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce has given us much to consider.  Let the debate begin.