Trends in K-12 Education and Their Predicted Impact On

Edu-Trends

Trends in K-12 Education and their Predicted Impact on

Worker Competencies in 2005-2010

"High-Performance"
Work Organizations / Educational Trends / "High-Performance"
Work Skills

September 30, 2001

By

Joshua Baron

Edward A. Friedman

Beth McGrath

Stevens Institute of Technology

Center for Improved Engineering and Science Education

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Acknowledgements

The authors of this report wish to thank:

Drew Gitomer, Senior Vice President, Research & Statistics

Educational Testing Service

Jerry MacArthur Hultin, Dean, WJHSchool of Technology Management

Stevens Institute of Technology

Arthur Melmed, Research Professor, School of Public Policy

GeorgeMasonUniversity

Cindy Miles, Vice President & COO

The League for Innovation in the Community College

Mark Milliron, Executive Director

The League for Innovation in the Community College

Karen Smith Executive Director

U.S. Tech Corps.

for their insights, perspectives and input into the conceptualization and development of this report.

Table of Contents

Executive Summary...... 4

IIntroduction...... 9

II21st Century High Performance Work Skills...... 11

Digital-Age Literacy...... 12

Communication and Interpersonal Skills...... 13

Inventive Thinking/High-Productivity Management...... 14

Learning and Knowledge...... 15

IIITrends in Educational Reform and Their Impact in the Workplace...... 17

Background...... 17

Standards and Accountability...... 18

Core Curriculum Content...... 25

New Cognitive Learning Theories...... 27

New Instructional Practices...... 30

Technology...... 34

Teacher Quality...... 38

Literacy: English and Basic Skills...... 41

School-Based Management...... 44

Class Size Reduction...... 47

Parent Involvement...... 50

Federal Policy and Politics...... 52

IVConclusions and Recommendations...... 55

Case Study: The Bergen County Academies...... 57

Case Study: Caledonia Elementary School...... 60

References...... 62

Executive Summary

The U.S. Department of Education’s seminal 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, is seen by many to be the “wake up call” to Americans on the need to “generate reform of our educational system in fundamental ways…”[1] citing more than a dozen indicators of erosion of the quality of the U.S. educational system. The SCANS[2] Report, nearly a decade later, further elaborated the actions and outcomes required of schools, citing necessary skills such as creative problem-solving, putting knowledge to work, adaptability, facility with technology, ability to work in teams, and a passion for lifelong learning. These reports emphasized the importance of conceptual understanding, problem-solving abilities, and the process of learning rather than memory recall of a finite set of facts. A Nation at Risk, SCANS and other reports focused America’s efforts for the first time on the “outputs” of education—the skills and competencies possessed by exiting students—rather than the inputs (the teaching process, the curriculum, the number of days, etc.) to the system.

Today, a number of public and private organizations[3] have issued similar calls to action. The term “21st century Skills” is now used to describe the competencies required of workers. These include:[4]

• Digital Age Literacy- basic, scientific, mathematic, and technological literacies; visual and information literacies; cultural literacy and global awareness;
• Inventive Thinking/High-Productivity Management- Adaptability/ability to manage complexity; curiosity, creativity, and risk taking; higher order thinking and sound reasoning; ability to prioritize, plan, and manage for results; effective use of real-world tools; relevant, high-quality products;
• Effective Communication/Interpersonal Skills- teaming, collaboration and interpersonal skills; personal and social responsibility; interactive communication;
• Learning and Knowledge- just-in-time learning; curiosity to become lifelong learners and teachers; knowing how to learn; use of instructional technology.

This report looks at a number of important trends in education that may affect the outputs of the educational process. It attempts to forecast and make predictions of those that are likely to have a significant impact on student outcomes during the period in question, 2005-2010; those that may have an impact past 2010; and those that are likely to have a negligible impact on student outcomes in the foreseeable future. It is important to recognize that these impact predictions are based on current information and their rate of momentum in today’s society and today’s educational system. Upon examination, it is clear that the U.S. educational system is an organic, dynamic, complex, and interdependent system in which changes in one input can dramatically affect outcomes in other areas.

The single factor in today’s educational system that is most likely to have an impact upon students’ 21st century workplace skills and competencies in the 2005-2010 period is:

• Technology - It is promoting new modes of student communication and collaboration with peer groups, experts and researchers; provides increased access to previously-inaccessible content and information; requires students to evaluate, synthesize, and prioritize content from a variety of sources; and enables more sophisticated analysis, problem-solving, and creation of new products. Home use of technology and the Internet has reached near saturation levels within affluent communities, making technology use and its consequences for communication, collaboration, research, and other habits of work and mind, an assumed skill among this demographic group.

Other trends likely to have an impact upon students’ 21st century skills in the 2005-2010 period include:

• The Standards, Accountability, and Testing movement, which began in earnest in the late 1980’s, has had a major impact on the body of knowledge that states and local school districts prescribe for their students; however, assessment of student achievement is not aligned with standards. As a result, many states test students on mastery of specific content rather than on higher-order thinking, critical analysis, and other 21st century workplace skill sets. Although a large percentage (78%) of public secondary schools report that content standards are used to guide instruction, only one in 10 report using all 10 recommended strategies that support comprehensive educational reform.[5] This trend has increasing momentum and may affect student competencies by the end of this decade and beyond.

• Research confirms the conventional wisdom that Parental Involvement affects student achievement. Federal programs such as Title I, increasing numbers of state mandates, and new public-private partnerships are underscoring the need and providing new strategies to increase productive parental involvement, particularly among urban and disadvantaged groups, in education. The consequences of these federal and local efforts are likely to begin to appear by the end of the decade.

Educational trends whose effects will either (a) not be understood until 2020 or beyond or (b) are predicted to have a negligible impact on students’ 21st century skills include:

• Spurred by comparative studies of U.S. student achievement against that of other developed countries, the Core Curriculum Content movement (strengthening the curriculum, particularly in science and mathematics, to include more depth of understanding of rigorous content) is receiving great attention. However, its effects are not likely to be realized until 2020 or beyond.

• Teacher Quality, or the under-preparation of teachers in their subject area knowledge, particularly at the secondary level and in the areas of science and mathematics, is an issue that is not likely to be a major factor in creating 21st century skills in students in 2005-2010. While a number of federal, state, and local efforts are in progress to improve teacher preparation, the sheer size of the challenge mitigates against its resolution in this time frame. Of the approximately 3 million U.S. teachers, less than one percent are currently certified by a national teacher certification board. Hence, teacher quality will not significantly change the outlook for 21st century worker skills for the period in question.

• New Cognitive Learning Theories and New Instructional Practices are increasingly being implemented in classrooms throughout the U.S. Educational researchers now categorize some 50 or more theories of learning, and most have associated recommendations for optimizing student learning through new modes of instruction. While many of these theories and practices show promising results, efforts are fragmented and scattershot, and not likely to show significant impact on the totality of students who will eventually enter the workplace in 2005-2010.

• In 2000, more than one third of job applicants lacked basic skills in reading and mathematics, according to the American Management Association. Literacy Programs, such as Head Start and President Bush’s new Reading First and Early Reading First initiatives, are likely to receive increased federal and private support in the near term. While these programs are expected to have an impact for children currently enrolled in PreK-3, their effects will not be realized in the workplace until 2020 or beyond.

• Educational trends, such as Class Size Reduction and School-Based Management, are also unlikely to impact students’ 21st century skills until well beyond 2010. While research shows positive effects of reduced class sizes for primary and elementary grades, its implementation is costly and problematic and, therefore, it is unlikely to be a determining factor of 21st century skills in the next decade. Similarly, school-based or site-based management (in essence, transferring decision-making authority and accountability from school districts to the individual schools) is a trend that has gained in popularity and is shown by some research to positively impact upon student achievement. Research, however, is inconclusive, and the actual practice of SBM is sometimes found to have detrimental effects on teaching and learning.

• Federal Policy and Programs with regard to education change as often as every four to eight years with the election of new officials and bureaucrats with their own vision of how the educational system should perform. The current rhetoric surrounding education emphasizes accountability, testing, flexibility, and choice; in essence, holding schools accountable for improving student achievement—as measured by scores on standardized tests—in return for greater authority and flexibility to design and implement successful programs. Given that there are 16,000 independent school districts in the country, the impact of even the most effective policies and programs will not likely be realized until well after this decade.

In light of these predictions and with the recognition of increased competition by employers for skilled IT workers in the coming decade, the recommendations of the authors of this report are for NIMA to prepare to create and invest in substantial on-the-job and external training and retraining programs. Such programs must recognize that non-traditional or underrepresented groups will comprise a larger percentage of prospective new hires; that these groups and the traditional pool of employees will require remediation in some basic skills and basic content knowledge; will need to be have a greater appreciation for geography and cultural diversity; will require a second language or third language to be fully-productive; will need to possess the tools of analysis, higher order thinking skills, and critical evaluation and synthesis of information from a variety of sources; will need to collaborate and work effectively as a team; and will need to know how to learn, through just-in-time learning and through traditional and non-traditional means.

Ubiquitous use of technology is the only assumption employers can make regarding an entering workforce in 2005-2010. Its use in school, while still at an immature stage in a majority of the K-12 sector, combined with near saturation levels of technology and Internet use at home, is transforming the way students communicate, work, research, and socialize. Technology facilitates progress and achievement in all of these worker competencies; therefore, NIMA is urged to create a workplace in which technology both facilitates and is integral to the learning process and to the work environment.

An overview of these trends and their potential impact on the workplace is presented in flowchart form in Figure 1 on the following page.

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IIntroduction

Testing, standards, accountability and many other phrases, all part of the new rhetoric of education reform, are spoken today within every echelon of society, from school board members to the President of the United States. To decipher these expressions is to gain insight into the trends that are present in education today and their potential for changing the workplace as we know it. This report, Edu-Trends, will discuss the trends that have gained momentum over the last two decades, the promise they hold for change in the process and outcomes of education, and the possible impact these changes will have on the workplace of the future.

Before looking toward the future, this report must turn to the past to understand the driving force behind current educational trends. Similar to the launch of Sputnik in 1957, which marked the beginning of the last great effort to change how America’s youth are educated, the OPEC oil embargo of 1973 and the development of a revolutionary new product, the personal computer, two years later denote "a boundary line" that defined new territory for the emerging global society.[6] The first event "made it unmistakably clear that our nation's economic future was no longer ours alone to decide" and that globalization and interdependence would shape the workplace needs of the future.[7] The dawn of the personal computer revolution "altered both the speed with which work is done and its very nature," forever changing the way millions carry out their jobs.

As the nation entered this new territory it saw a shift in the competitive elements of the industrial economy from an emphasis on low prices to an emphasis on high quality. This shift, which is symbolized by the dramatic changes in the automobile industry in the mid- to late-1970's, drove the need for a new type of work organization that embodied new strategies and environments. This “high performance” work organization, upon which countries such as Japan and Germany had depended for years, is "relentlessly committed to excellence, to product quality, and to customer service."[8] The enabling component that is central to moving from the industrial "assembly line" model to that of high performance is decentralized control that is achieved through increased worker autonomy. The consequence of this shift is that front line workers are given the responsibility for solving "a host of problems as they arise, rather than waiting for their supervisors to solve them."[9] This seemingly small but dramatic shift in how work is organized means that "the ranks of middle management and many support functions are thinned out…" creating large productivity gains through cost reduction as well as dramatic improvements in quality.[10]

What’s the connection, then, between past economic changes and the current educational trends and their associated impact on the future workplace? The answer is now self-evident. The fundamental economic shifts of the 1970's created a need for new work strategies and environments that are embodied by high performance work organizations. The key to implementing these new strategies and creating new environments was a new work force that had 21st century high performance work skills. The U.S. "education system, modeled on industrial organization, was crafted to supply the work force that the industrial economy needed…"[11] and not the work force that the global economy today demands. Thus, the economic changes of the past 30 years are in fact driving the need for a new educational system--one that can instill 21st century workplace skills in the next generation of workers (see Figure 1 on page 8).

Let us return now to the quote that opens this report. It is excerpted from the seminal 1983 U.S. Department of Education report, A Nation at Risk, which is seen by many as the initiating event for today's educational reform movement. A Nation at Risk, along with many other reports that followed, was a call to arms for educators, policy makers and the American public to address a growing crisis in education that was placing the nation at risk in an ever more global economy. The educational trends seen today are largely a consequence of America's response to this report and the critical need to produce citizens that possessed 21st century high performance work skills. The fundamental question that this report will attempt to answer is: are these educational trends on track to meet this vital national goal in the 2005-2010 time period, or will America’s workplaces continue to be staffed with industrial-era workers with industrial-era skills?

II21st Century High Performance Work Skills

To begin to answer this question, this report will attempt to construct a model explaining the interconnected nature of current educational trends and their impact on the skills and competencies of workers in the 2005-2010 time period.

As noted in the introduction, fundamental shifts in world economics in the mid-1970's set in motion a dramatic series of changes in the underlying structure of how businesses operated. Prior to this time, and even in many companies today, the basic structure was based on the "Taylorist work organization" in which all production work was broken "down into very simple tasks that could quickly and easily be learned by someone with little education."[12] This model, which was the cornerstone of the assembly line and mass production methods made famous by Henry T. Ford, was the brainchild of Frederick Winslow Taylor. Taylor saw this process as a way to take maximum advantage of the large numbers of unskilled immigrants that were pouring into the country in the late 1800's and the dawn of the 1900’s. This approach of scientific management "made the front-line workers part of the largest and richest middle class the world had ever seen."[13] It is no surprise, then, that during this time America built one of the world's largest and most powerful "education systems that was perfectly matched to the needs of the Taylorist workplace."[14]