U.S. Reforms Out of Sync With High-Performing Nations, Report Finds

By Stephen Sawchuk

Ed Week

The United States’ education system is neither coherent nor likely to see great improvements based on its current attempts at reform, a report released this week by the National Center on Education and the Economy concludes.

The NCEE report is the latest salvo in a flurry of national interest in what can be gleaned from education systems in top-performing or rapidly improving countries. It pushes further than other recent reports on the topic by laying out an ambitious agenda for the United States it says reflects the education practices in countries that are among the highest-performing on international assessments.

Among other measures, the report outlines a less-frequent system of standardized student testing; a statewide funding-equity model that prioritizes the neediest students, rather than local distribution of resources; and greater emphasis on the professionalization of teaching that would overhaul most elements of the current model of training, professional development, and compensation.

“I think we have been for a long time caught in a vicious cycle. We’ve been unwilling to do the things that have been needed to have a high-quality teaching force,” including raising the entry standard for teacher preparation and requiring prospective teachers to major in a content area, said Marc S. Tucker, the president of the NCEE.

“We’ve been unwilling to pay teachers at the level of engineers. We’ve been solving our problems of teacher shortages by waiving the very low standards that we have. We have been frustrated by low student performance, and now, we’re blaming our teachers for that, which makes it even harder to get good people,” Mr. Tucker continued.

The paper also states that progress on any one of the reform areas alone is unlikely to result in widespread boosts in student learning. All efforts, it says, are interconnected and should be linked to a coherent vision of what students should know and a system for ascertaining whether they achieve those goals.

The report also praises the United States’ progress on clearer, common academic standards in English/language arts and mathematics as a first step in defining such outcomes. But it notes that the success of that venture will depend on its ability to connect such expectations to the other pieces of the country’s education system.

Major Findings

Once a topic primarily reserved for academics, the “international comparisons” discussion has exploded over the past few years, with policymakers, pundits, and teachers’ unions arguing that better educating students is crucial to the nation’s economic success.

It has also been the subject of considerable federal interest. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan helped convene a major forum of education leaders from 16 countries in March, and he commissioned the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a forum representing a group of industrialized nations, to produce a report about what lessons could be learned from the results of the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA. ("International Leaders Urge Nations to Raise Status of Teachers," March 30, 2011.)

The NCEE report draws both on qualitative case studies of other countries’ systems and on the quantitative data and extensive background surveys produced as part of PISA. Much of the analysis incorporates information from the OECD report commissioned by Mr. Duncan, which NCEE also produced.

It builds on the former efforts, however, by contrasting the practices of those countries with undertakings in the United States.

For instance, the report notes that no other country has grade-by-grade national testing, pointing out that such countries as Singapore and Japan tend to use such exams sparingly, only at the end of primary and secondary schooling. The tests are closely linked to curricula and carry stakes for students in terms of progressing, rather than being used for school or teacher accountability.

Such countries also have much higher entry standards for teachers and require greater content knowledge, which is better integrated with training in pedagogy. In general, the report states, such efforts have helped to elevate the status of the profession, which is reflected in higher pay, more autonomy, and additional career opportunities as teachers advance.