Summit Confronts Shortfalls of School Reform

Forty-nine states now have detailed academic standards. More than half test students on their knowledge of the standards, and 16 judge schools based on their pupils’ performance.

But as President Clinton and 28 governors gathered Thursday to assess the progress of the standards movement, they acknowledged that the emphasis on results has yet to transform teaching and learning.

As a consequence, the nation is far short of most of the goals set a decade ago after the first such “summit” between governors and the president, in that case George Bush. One goal was for U.S. students to be the best in the world in math and science by 2000. Instead, fewer than a third are now considered to be even proficient in those fields.

Close to half of American 17-year-olds lack the skills in math and reading needed to get hired in the auto industry, and surveys show that a third of all job applicants in all businesses are rejected for that reason.

“Ten years later and three months shy of the year 2000, we’ve got virtually nothing to show for all this effort in terms of improved student achievement,” said Chester E. Finn, a former top education official in the Ronald Reagan administration and a summit participant.

One clear result of the frustration is far greater interest in shifting money, in the form of vouchers, from public schools to private ones.

The issue was considered too divisive to even be on the agenda at the original summit or a second one three years ago, but it now has become as much a part of the national discussion about education as the standards movement, Finn said. Rather than fear competition, he said, public schools should see it as a necessary complement to their effort to improve.

Also driving the push for reform is the rapidly changing world economy, which IBM Chairman and CEO Louis V. Gerstner said demands higher skills. “Beginning now and for as far as we can see in the future, the thing that will separate winners and losers among people, industries and nations . . . is the ability to use information,” he said at the summit, held at IBM headquarters near New York City.

Yet, he said, U.S. students fall further behind in science the longer they are in school. Our fourth-graders perform with the best in the world, but eighth-graders rank 28th. By the time they graduate, they are behind their counterparts in every other developed nation.

Despite the lack of measurable progress in student achievement, the nature of the discussion at the summit illustrated what may be the greatest accomplishment of the past decade--changing the focus of the debate from spending to results.

The aim of the gathering, which unlike the previous two events attracted educators as well as business and political leaders, is to strengthen the resolve of governors to stay the course. Pressure to eliminate tests or water down rigorous standards will grow, Gerstner warned, as it becomes clear that not all children will measure up.

“Still,” he told the governors, “we’ve got to bear the pain. . . . We’ve got to have the guts and the political will to press forward.”

The second aim of the summit is to map a strategy for taking standards from the drawing board to the chalkboard.

Wisconsin Gov. Tommy G. Thompson, who with Gerstner co-chaired the summit, said in an interview that states need to begin comparing their standards with one another’s to make sure they are rigorous enough. States also need to align their tests--and the recruitment, training and professional development of teachers--with their standards, he said.

Finally, he said, “we have to take a look at incentives and find out what incentives are working and how can we use those incentives to do a better job with . . . classroom instruction.”

Clinton, who as governor of Arkansas co-chaired the first national education summit, said mastering the standards has to count--for schools, teachers and students--if they are going to become reality.

He struck that note repeatedly in his address. Although all of the states except Iowa now have standards, only 16 reward or sanction schools for their performance on tests of those standards.

But schools should not be expected to do it alone, he said. “We’ve got to give the schools what they need to do the job, and the federal government has a role to play,” he said.

Clinton is battling Congress to secure more money for education. The budget proposed by Congress cut the administration’s proposal 17%.

The president has given teeth to the standards movement through changes to the $8-billion Title I program that aids disadvantaged students. The administration now requires states to have standards against which to measure the progress of schools receiving that money.

By next year, states that get the federal funds must have tests based on those standards that show how different types of students compare. Most states are not expected to be able to meet that deadline.

North Carolina and Texas are often cited as examples of states where performance is tied to rewards or punishments. In North Carolina, teachers can earn bonuses of up to $1,500 apiece if test scores improve dramatically.

In California this academic year, teachers at low-performing schools can earn rewards of up to $25,000 apiece if their schools’ test scores go up 10% or more. Awards of $150 per pupil are to be awarded to schools that make gains of at least 5%.

“These are marketplace incentives that reward student achievement,” said Gov. Gray Davis, who explained the new program to the gathering.

A handful of districts around the nation have incentive pay programs, said Bob Chase, president of the National Education Assn., the nation’s largest teachers union. He urged policymakers “to take a deep breath on this stuff” and wait to see if the incentives result in improved student achievement before launching new ones.

The summit will conclude today with the creation of an action plan for the next few years. That plan is expected to address ways to improve the quality of teachers. The percentage of teachers qualified in the subject they teach has fallen in the past 10 years from 66% to 63%.

“There’s lots of evidence to suggest that relatively few teachers feel prepared to teach to higher standards, and if you don’t deal with that, kids won’t reach higher standards,” said Michael Cohen, a senior advisor to U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley.

This summer the California Legislature debated a school accountability plan backed by Davis. Under that plan, schools are ranked based on test scores. This year, 430 of the low-performing schools were selected for grants to fund the drafting of road maps for improvement.

Schools that fail to improve for two years face shutdown, reassignment of teachers, dismissal of the principal or conversion to a charter school. Such severe penalties worry many educators, because many schools lack qualified teachers or other resources.

Thompson urged his fellow governors to keep not back down.

“You have to be willing to go out and talk to parents and PTAs and teachers and tell them, ‘Even if you fail, this is the beginning, this is change. And don’t despair over failure but look to the future and how you’re going to pass the next time.’ ”