Dramatic Overhaul Is Urged Of Nation’s Education System

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The New York Sun

WASHINGTON — A national panel that includes city schools Chancellor Joel Klein is urging a dramatic overhaul of the American education system, with proposals to end high school after 10th grade for many students; abandon local funding of schools, and for the federal government to deposit $500 into an account for every child.

The recommendations, made by a commission comprising former Cabinet secretaries, governors, and city schools chiefs, would also restructure the salary structure for teachers, raising base pay nationwide but lowering pension outlays. The panel is also urging that public schools be run by teacher-led independent contractors, similar to how many charter schools are now. The proposals are part of a 15-year plan and would be financed by a major reallocation of education resources.

“We’re calling here for a complete shake-up, from top to bottom,” the panel’s chairman, Charles Knapp, said. Mr. Knapp headed the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, a group spearheaded by the National Center on Education and the Economy that yesterday announced its proposals and released an accompanying report, “Touch Choices or Tough Times.”

The Bloomberg administration played a prominent role in the release of the report: Mr. Klein sat on the commission, and Mayor Bloomberg was scheduled to speak at the announcement here before a dense fog kept his plane grounded in New York. The mayor echoed the spirit of the panel’s conclusions in a Wall Street Journal editorial appearing yesterday, in which he compared the country’s education system to the American auto industry during the 1970s, calling it “flabby, inefficient, and outdated.”

Despite its involvement, the administration is not endorsing the panel’s most far-reaching and controversial proposals. The commission recommends creating a cut-off point in high school at the end of the 10th grade, when students would take a state board examination. Depending on their scores, students would either stay in school for two years of college-preparatory, Advanced Placement-style courses, or they would leave high school to attend a two-year community or technical college with the goal of later transferring to a four-year college.

“It’s not a proposal we would implement or have the power to implement,” Mr. Klein said in a telephone interview after his plane to Washington was also grounded in New York. He added, however, that the idea “should be thought about seriously,” saying he supported creating more career-oriented programs. For many teenagers, Mr. Klein said, the last two years of high school are “largely not particularly important.”

Another recommendation not likely to fly in New York is a proposal to eliminate local funding of schools in favor of state funding. The city for years has fought with Albany for more school dollars, and a lawsuit seeking billions in additional funding is close to being settled after more than a decade. No one, however, envisions a total funding shift to Albany. “I don’t think that proposal is on the table,” Mr. Klein said.

The chancellor said that in many ways, the city was already ahead of its time. He cited increases in teacher pay and performance-based incentives, as well as the expansion of “empowerment schools” that give principals more discretion in budgetary and hiring decisions. “We need bold thinking — not just to stimulate discussion, but to stimulate action,” Mr. Klein said.

In Washington, the commissioners were even more adamant. In announcing their recommendations, they cast the state of American education in dire terms, suggesting that nothing short of a sea change in policy would allow the nation’s youth to keep up with competitors around the world.

“Our commissioners, to a person, are persuaded that the situation we face is full of peril for the United States,” the panel’s vice chairman, Marc Tucker, said. “We are losing the education race to other nations in this new global economy.”

He also warned that “only selecting those ideas that cost the least and offend the fewest will not solve the problem.”

Among the panel’s other proposals was a call for a “GI bill for our times,” in which the federal government would deposit $500 in an education account for every child born.

The commission said that changing the high school track and restructuring teacher pay could yield up to $67 billion in savings that panelists propose reinvesting in teacher training, recruitment, and other programs.

The American Federation of Teachers was quick to deride some of the panel’s proposals. “While the commission’s proposal supports several key steps to improve our education system, it also includes some seriously flawed ideas with faddish allure that won’t produce better academic results,” the union’s executive vice president, Antonia Cortese, said in a statement. Ms. Cortese praised one of the commission’s recommendations: its call for universal pre-Kindergarten.

In a statement, the federal Department of Education said it would review the report and that it shared many of the commission’s concerns.


The New York Sun

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