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The Education System of the United States of America: Overview and Foundations

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Prevailing discourse in the USA about the country’s teachers, educational institutions, and instructional approaches is a conversation that is national in character. Yet the structures and the administrative and governance apparatuses themselves are strikingly local in character across the USA. Public understanding and debate about education can be distorted in light of divergence between the country’s educational aspirations and the vehicles in place for pursuing those aims. In addressing its purpose as a survey of US education, the following chapter interrogates this apparent contradiction, first discussing historical and social factors that help account for a social construction of the USA as singular and national system. Discussion then moves to a descriptive analysis of education in the USA as institutionalized at the numerous levels – aspects that often reflect local prerogative and difference more so than a uniform national character. The chapter concludes with summary points regarding US federalism as embodied in the country’s oversight and conduct of formal education.

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Fossum, P.R. (2021). The Education System of the United States of America: Overview and Foundations. In: Jornitz, S., Parreira do Amaral, M. (eds) The Education Systems of the Americas. Global Education Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41651-5_14

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In South Korea and Finland, it’s not about finding the “right” school.

Fifty years ago, both South Korea and Finland had terrible education systems. Finland was at risk of becoming the economic stepchild of Europe. South Korea was ravaged by civil war. Yet over the past half century, both South Korea and Finland have turned their schools around — and now both countries are hailed internationally for their extremely high educational outcomes. What can other countries learn from these two successful, but diametrically opposed, educational models? Here’s an overview of what South Korea and Finland are doing right.

The Korean model: Grit and hard, hard, hard work.

For millennia, in some parts of Asia, the only way to climb the socioeconomic ladder and find secure work was to take an examination — in which the proctor was a proxy for the emperor , says Marc Tucker, president and CEO of the National Center on Education and the Economy. Those examinations required a thorough command of knowledge, and taking them was a grueling rite of passage. Today, many in the Confucian countries still respect the kind of educational achievement that is promoted by an exam culture.

The Koreans have achieved a remarkable feat: the country is 100 percent literate. But success comes with a price.

Among these countries, South Korea stands apart as the most extreme, and arguably, most successful. The Koreans have achieved a remarkable feat: the country is 100 percent literate, and at the forefront of international comparative tests of achievement, including tests of critical thinking and analysis. But this success comes with a price: Students are under enormous, unrelenting pressure to perform. Talent is not a consideration — because the culture believes in hard work and diligence above all, there is no excuse for failure. Children study year-round, both in-school and with tutors. If you study hard enough, you can be smart enough.

“Koreans basically believe that I have to get through this really tough period to have a great future,” says Andreas Schleicher , director of education and skills at PISA and special advisor on education policy at the OECD. “It’s a question of short-term unhappiness and long-term happiness.” It’s not just the parents pressuring their kids. Because this culture traditionally celebrates conformity and order, pressure from other students can also heighten performance expectations. This community attitude expresses itself even in early-childhood education, says Joe Tobin, professor of early childhood education at the University of Georgia who specializes in comparative international research. In Korea, as in other Asian countries, class sizes are very large — which would be extremely undesirable for, say, an American parent. But in Korea, the goal is for the teacher to lead the class as a community, and for peer relationships to develop. In American preschools, the focus for teachers is on developing individual relationships with students, and intervening regularly in peer relationships.

“I think it is clear there are better and worse way to educate our children,” says Amanda Ripley, author of The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way . “At the same time, if I had to choose between an average US education and an average Korean education for my own kid, I would choose, very reluctantly, the Korean model. The reality is, in the modern world the kid is going to have to know how to learn, how to work hard and how to persist after failure. The Korean model teaches that.”

The Finnish model: Extracurricular choice, intrinsic motivation.

In Finland, on the other hand, students are learning the benefits of both rigor and flexibility. The Finnish model, say educators, is utopia.

Finland has a short school day rich with school-sponsored extracurriculars, because Finns believe important learning happens outside the classroom.

In Finland, school is the center of the community, notes Schleicher. School provides not just educational services, but social services. Education is about creating identity.

Finnish culture values intrinsic motivation and the pursuit of personal interest. It has a relatively short school day rich with school-sponsored extracurriculars, because culturally, Finns believe important learning happens outside of the classroom. (An exception? Sports, which are not sponsored by schools, but by towns.) A third of the classes that students take in high school are electives, and they can even choose which matriculation exams they are going to take. It’s a low-stress culture, and it values a wide variety of learning experiences.

But that does not except it from academic rigor, motivated by the country’s history trapped between European superpowers, says Pasi Sahlberg, Finnish educator and author of Finnish Lessons: What the World Can Learn From Educational Change in Finland .

Teachers in Finland teach 600 hours a year, spending the rest of time in professional development. In the U.S., teachers are in the classroom 1,100 hours a year, with little time for feedback.

“A key to that is education. Finns do not really exist outside of Finland,” says Sahlberg. “This drives people to take education more seriously. For example, nobody speaks this funny language that we do. Finland is bilingual, and every student learns both Finnish and Swedish. And every Finn who wants to be successful has to master at least one other language, often English, but she also typically learns German, French, Russian and many others. Even the smallest children understand that nobody else speaks Finnish, and if they want to do anything else in life, they need to learn languages.”

Finns share one thing with South Koreans: a deep respect for teachers and their academic accomplishments. In Finland, only one in ten applicants to teaching programs is admitted. After a mass closure of 80 percent of teacher colleges in the 1970s, only the best university training programs remained, elevating the status of educators in the country. Teachers in Finland teach 600 hours a year, spending the rest of time in professional development, meeting with colleagues, students and families. In the U.S., teachers are in the classroom 1,100 hours a year, with little time for collaboration, feedback or professional development.

How Americans can change education culture

As TED speaker Sir Ken Robinson noted in his 2013 talk ( How to escape education’s death valley ), when it comes to current American education woes “the dropout crisis is just the tip of an iceberg. What it doesn’t count are all the kids who are in school but being disengaged from it, who don’t enjoy it, who don’t get any real benefit from it.” But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Notes Amanda Ripley, “culture is a thing that changes. It’s more malleable than we think. Culture is like this ether that has all kinds of things swirling around in it, some of which are activated and some of which are latent. Given an economic imperative or change in leadership or accident of history, those things get activated.” The good news is, “We Americans have a lot of things in our culture which would support a very strong education system, such as a longstanding rhetoric about the equality of opportunity and a strong and legitimate meritocracy,” says Ripley.

One reason we haven’t made much progress academically over the past 50 years is because it hasn’t been economically crucial for American kids to master sophisticated problem-solving and critical-thinking skills in order to survive. But that’s not true anymore. “There’s a lag for cultures to catch up with economic realities, and right now we’re living in that lag,” says Ripley. “So our kids aren’t growing up with the kind of skills or grit to make it in the global economy.”

“We are prisoners of the pictures and experiences of education that we had,” says Tony Wagner , expert-in-residence at Harvard’s educational innovation center and author of The Global Achievement Gap . “We want schools for our kids that mirror our own experience, or what we thought we wanted. That severely limits our ability to think creatively of a different kind of education. But there’s no way that tweaking that assembly line will meet the 21st-century world. We need a major overhaul.”

Indeed. Today, the American culture of choice puts the onus on parents to find the “right” schools for our kids, rather than trusting that all schools are capable of preparing our children for adulthood. Our obsession with talent puts the onus on students to be “smart,” rather than on adults’ ability to teach them. And our antiquated system for funding schools makes property values the arbiter of spending per student, not actual values.

But what will American education culture look like tomorrow? In the most successful education cultures in the world, it is the system that is responsible for the success of the student, says Schleicher — not solely the parent, not solely the student, not solely the teacher. The culture creates the system. The hope is that Americans can find the grit and will to change their own culture — one parent, student and teacher at a time.

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About the author

Amy S. Choi is a freelance journalist, writer and editor based in Brooklyn, N.Y. She is the co-founder and editorial director of The Mash-Up Americans, a media and consulting company that examines multidimensional modern life in the U.S.

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Four of the biggest problems facing education—and four trends that could make a difference

Eduardo velez bustillo, harry a. patrinos.

In 2022, we published, Lessons for the education sector from the COVID-19 pandemic , which was a follow up to,  Four Education Trends that Countries Everywhere Should Know About , which summarized views of education experts around the world on how to handle the most pressing issues facing the education sector then. We focused on neuroscience, the role of the private sector, education technology, inequality, and pedagogy.

Unfortunately, we think the four biggest problems facing education today in developing countries are the same ones we have identified in the last decades .

1. The learning crisis was made worse by COVID-19 school closures

Low quality instruction is a major constraint and prior to COVID-19, the learning poverty rate in low- and middle-income countries was 57% (6 out of 10 children could not read and understand basic texts by age 10). More dramatic is the case of Sub-Saharan Africa with a rate even higher at 86%. Several analyses show that the impact of the pandemic on student learning was significant, leaving students in low- and middle-income countries way behind in mathematics, reading and other subjects.  Some argue that learning poverty may be close to 70% after the pandemic , with a substantial long-term negative effect in future earnings. This generation could lose around $21 trillion in future salaries, with the vulnerable students affected the most.

2. Countries are not paying enough attention to early childhood care and education (ECCE)

At the pre-school level about two-thirds of countries do not have a proper legal framework to provide free and compulsory pre-primary education. According to UNESCO, only a minority of countries, mostly high-income, were making timely progress towards SDG4 benchmarks on early childhood indicators prior to the onset of COVID-19. And remember that ECCE is not only preparation for primary school. It can be the foundation for emotional wellbeing and learning throughout life; one of the best investments a country can make.

3. There is an inadequate supply of high-quality teachers

Low quality teaching is a huge problem and getting worse in many low- and middle-income countries.  In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, the percentage of trained teachers fell from 84% in 2000 to 69% in 2019 . In addition, in many countries teachers are formally trained and as such qualified, but do not have the minimum pedagogical training. Globally, teachers for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects are the biggest shortfalls.

4. Decision-makers are not implementing evidence-based or pro-equity policies that guarantee solid foundations

It is difficult to understand the continued focus on non-evidence-based policies when there is so much that we know now about what works. Two factors contribute to this problem. One is the short tenure that top officials have when leading education systems. Examples of countries where ministers last less than one year on average are plentiful. The second and more worrisome deals with the fact that there is little attention given to empirical evidence when designing education policies.

To help improve on these four fronts, we see four supporting trends:

1. Neuroscience should be integrated into education policies

Policies considering neuroscience can help ensure that students get proper attention early to support brain development in the first 2-3 years of life. It can also help ensure that children learn to read at the proper age so that they will be able to acquire foundational skills to learn during the primary education cycle and from there on. Inputs like micronutrients, early child stimulation for gross and fine motor skills, speech and language and playing with other children before the age of three are cost-effective ways to get proper development. Early grade reading, using the pedagogical suggestion by the Early Grade Reading Assessment model, has improved learning outcomes in many low- and middle-income countries. We now have the tools to incorporate these advances into the teaching and learning system with AI , ChatGPT , MOOCs and online tutoring.

2. Reversing learning losses at home and at school

There is a real need to address the remaining and lingering losses due to school closures because of COVID-19.  Most students living in households with incomes under the poverty line in the developing world, roughly the bottom 80% in low-income countries and the bottom 50% in middle-income countries, do not have the minimum conditions to learn at home . These students do not have access to the internet, and, often, their parents or guardians do not have the necessary schooling level or the time to help them in their learning process. Connectivity for poor households is a priority. But learning continuity also requires the presence of an adult as a facilitator—a parent, guardian, instructor, or community worker assisting the student during the learning process while schools are closed or e-learning is used.

To recover from the negative impact of the pandemic, the school system will need to develop at the student level: (i) active and reflective learning; (ii) analytical and applied skills; (iii) strong self-esteem; (iv) attitudes supportive of cooperation and solidarity; and (v) a good knowledge of the curriculum areas. At the teacher (instructor, facilitator, parent) level, the system should aim to develop a new disposition toward the role of teacher as a guide and facilitator. And finally, the system also needs to increase parental involvement in the education of their children and be active part in the solution of the children’s problems. The Escuela Nueva Learning Circles or the Pratham Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) are models that can be used.

3. Use of evidence to improve teaching and learning

We now know more about what works at scale to address the learning crisis. To help countries improve teaching and learning and make teaching an attractive profession, based on available empirical world-wide evidence , we need to improve its status, compensation policies and career progression structures; ensure pre-service education includes a strong practicum component so teachers are well equipped to transition and perform effectively in the classroom; and provide high-quality in-service professional development to ensure they keep teaching in an effective way. We also have the tools to address learning issues cost-effectively. The returns to schooling are high and increasing post-pandemic. But we also have the cost-benefit tools to make good decisions, and these suggest that structured pedagogy, teaching according to learning levels (with and without technology use) are proven effective and cost-effective .

4. The role of the private sector

When properly regulated the private sector can be an effective education provider, and it can help address the specific needs of countries. Most of the pedagogical models that have received international recognition come from the private sector. For example, the recipients of the Yidan Prize on education development are from the non-state sector experiences (Escuela Nueva, BRAC, edX, Pratham, CAMFED and New Education Initiative). In the context of the Artificial Intelligence movement, most of the tools that will revolutionize teaching and learning come from the private sector (i.e., big data, machine learning, electronic pedagogies like OER-Open Educational Resources, MOOCs, etc.). Around the world education technology start-ups are developing AI tools that may have a good potential to help improve quality of education .

After decades asking the same questions on how to improve the education systems of countries, we, finally, are finding answers that are very promising.  Governments need to be aware of this fact.

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Senior Adviser, Education

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What Changes to the U.S. Education System Are Needed to Support Long-Term Success for All Americans?

With the pandemic deepening inequities that threaten students’ prospects, the vice president of the Corporation’s National Program provides a vision for transforming our education system from one characterized by uneven and unjust results to one that puts all students on a path to bright futures 

At no point in our nation’s history have we asked so much of our education system as we do today. We ask that our primary and secondary schools prepare all students, regardless of background, for a lifetime of learning. We ask that teachers guide every child toward deeper understanding while simultaneously attending to their social-emotional development. And we ask that our institutions of higher learning serve students with a far broader range of life circumstances than ever before.

We ask these things of education because the future we aspire to requires it. The nature of work and civic participation is evolving at an unprecedented rate. Advances in automation, artificial intelligence, and social media are driving rapid changes in how we interact with each other and what skills hold value. In the world our children will inherit, their ability to adapt, think critically, and work effectively with others will be essential for both their own success and the well-being of society.

At Carnegie Corporation of New York, we focus on supporting people who are in a position to meet this challenge. That includes the full spectrum of educators, administrators, family members, and others who shape young people’s learning experiences as they progress toward and into adulthood. Our mission is to empower all students with the tools, systems, knowledge, and mindsets to prepare them to fully participate in the global economy and in a robust democracy.

All of our work is geared toward transforming student learning. The knowledge, skills, and dispositions required for success today call for a vastly different set of learning experiences than may have sufficed in the past. Students must play a more active role in their own learning, and that learning must encompass more than subject-matter knowledge. Preparing all children for success requires greater attention to inclusiveness in the classroom, differentiation in teaching and learning, and universal high expectations.

This transformation needs to happen in higher education as well. A high school education is no longer enough to ensure financial security. We need more high-quality postsecondary options, better guidance for students as they transition beyond high school, and sufficient supports to enable all students to complete their postsecondary programs. Preparing students for lifelong success requires stronger connections between K–12, higher education, and work.

The need for such transformation has become all the more urgent in the face of COVID-19. As with past economic crises, the downturn resulting from the pandemic is likely to accelerate the erosion of opportunities for low-skilled workers with only a high school education. Investments in innovative learning models and student supports are critical to preventing further inequities in learning outcomes. 

An Urgent Call for Advancing Equity 

The 2020–21 school year may prove to be the most consequential in American history. With unfathomable speed, COVID-19 has forced more change in how schools operate than in the previous half century.

What is most concerning in all of this is the impact on the most underserved and historically marginalized in our society: low-income children and students of color. Even before the current crisis, the future prospects of a young person today looked very different depending on the color of her skin and the zip code in which she grew up, but the pandemic exposed and exacerbated long-standing racial and economic inequities. And the same families who are faring worst in terms of disrupted schooling are bearing the brunt of the economic downturn and disproportionately getting sick, being hospitalized, and dying.

Our mission is to empower all students with the tools, systems, knowledge, and mindsets to prepare them to fully participate in the global economy and in a robust democracy.

Every organization that is committed to educational improvement needs to ask itself what it can do differently to further advance the cause of educational equity during this continuing crisis so that we can make lasting improvements. As we know from past experience, if the goal of equity is not kept front and center, those who are already behind through no fault of their own will benefit the least. If ever there were a time to heed this caution, it is now.

We hope that our nation will approach education with a new sense of purpose and a shared commitment to ensuring that our schools truly work for every child. Whether or not that happens will depend on our resolve and our actions in the coming months. We have the proof points and know-how to transform learning, bolster instruction, and meet the needs of our most disadvantaged students. What has changed is the urgency for doing so at scale.

Our starting place must be a vision of equal opportunity, and from there we must create the conditions that can actually ensure it — irrespective of how different they may look from the ones we now have. We need to reimagine the systems that shape student learning and put the communities whose circumstances we most need to elevate at the center of that process. We need to recognize that we will not improve student outcomes without building the capacity of the adults who work with them, supporting them with high-quality resources and meaningful opportunities for collaboration and professional growth. We need to promote stronger connections between K–12, higher education, and employment so that all students are prepared for lifelong success.

The pandemic has deepened inequities that threaten students’ prospects. But if we seize this moment and learn from it, if we marshal the necessary resources, we have the potential to transform our education system from one characterized by uneven and unjust results to one that puts all students on a path to bright futures.

In a pandemic-induced moment when the American education system has been blown into 25 million homes across the country, where do we go from here?

We Must Learn to Act in New Ways

These are not controversial ideas. In fact, they constitute the general consensus about where American education needs to go. But they also represent a tall order for the people who influence the system. Practically everyone who plays a part in education must learn to act in new ways.

That we have made progress in such areas as high school completion, college-going rates, and the adoption of college- and career-ready standards is a testament to the commitment of those working in the field. But it will take more than commitment to achieve the changes in student learning that our times demand. We can’t expect individuals to figure out what they need to do on their own, nor should we be surprised if they struggle to do so when working in institutional structures designed to produce different outcomes. The transformation we seek calls for much greater coordination and a broader set of allies than would suffice for more incremental changes.

Our starting place must be a vision of equal opportunity, and from there we must create the conditions that can actually ensure it — irrespective of how different they may look from the ones we now have.

Our best hope for achieving equity and the transformation of student learning is to enhance adults’ ability to contribute to that learning. That means building their capacity while supporting their authentic engagement in promoting a high-quality education for every child. It also means ensuring that people operate within systems that are optimized to support their effectiveness and that a growing body of knowledge informs their efforts.

These notions comprise our overarching strategy for promoting the systems change needed to transform student learning experiences on a large scale. We seek to enhance adult capacity and stakeholder engagement in the service of ensuring that all students are prepared to meet the demands of the 21st century. We also support knowledge development and organizational improvement to the extent that investments in these areas enhance adult capacity, stakeholder engagement, and student experiences.

Five Ways We Invest in the Future of Students

These views on how best to promote systems change in education guide our philanthropic work. The strategic areas of change we focus on are major themes throughout our five investment portfolios. Although they are managed separately and support different types of initiatives, each seeks to address its area of focus from multiple angles. A single portfolio may include grants that build adult capacity, enhance stakeholder engagement, and generate new knowledge.

New Designs to Advance Learning

Preparing all students for success requires that we fundamentally reimagine our nation’s schools and classrooms. Our public education system needs to catch up with how the world is evolving and with what we’ve come to understand about how people learn. That means attending to a broader diversity of learning styles and bringing what happens in school into greater alignment with what happens in the worlds of work and civic life. We make investments to increase the number of innovative learning models that support personalized experiences, academic mastery, and positive youth development. We also make investments that build the capacity of districts and intermediaries to improve learning experiences for all students as well as grants to investigate relevant issues of policy and practice.

Pathways to Postsecondary Success

Lifelong success in the United States has never been more dependent on educational attainment than it is today. Completing some education beyond the 12th grade has virtually become a necessity for financial security and meaningful work. But for that possibility to exist for everyone, we need to address the historical barriers that keep many students from pursuing and completing a postsecondary program, and we must strengthen the options available to all students for education after high school. Through our investments, we seek to increase the number of young people able to access and complete a postsecondary program, with a major focus on removing historical barriers for students who are first-generation college-goers, low-income, or from underrepresented groups. We also look to expand the range of high-quality postsecondary options and to strengthen alignment between K–12, higher education, and the world of work.

Leadership and Teaching to Advance Learning

At its core, learning is about the interplay between teachers, students, and content. How teachers and students engage with each other and with their curriculum plays a predominant role in determining what students learn and how well they learn it. That’s not to say that factors outside of school don’t also greatly impact student learning. But the research is clear that among the factors a school might control, nothing outweighs the teaching that students experience. We focus on supporting educators in implementing rigorous college- and career-ready standards in math, science, and English language arts. We make investments to increase the supply of and demand for high-quality curricular materials and professional learning experiences for teachers and administrators.

Public Understanding

As central as they are to the education process, school professionals are hardly the only people with a critical role to play in student learning. Students spend far more time with family and other community members than they do at school. And numerous stakeholders outside of the education system have the potential to strengthen and shape what happens within it. The success of our nation’s schools depends on far more individuals than are employed by them. 

We invest in efforts to engage families and other stakeholders as active partners in supporting equitable access to high-quality student learning. We also support media organizations and policy research groups in building awareness about key issues related to educational equity and improvement.

Integration, Learning, and Innovation

Those of us who work for change in education need a new set of habits to achieve our vision of 21st-century learning. It will take more than a factory-model mindset to transform our education system into one that prepares all learners for an increasingly complex world. We must approach this task with flexibility, empathy for the people involved, and an understanding of how to learn from what’s working and what’s not. We work to reduce the fragmentation, inefficiencies, and missteps that often result when educational improvement strategies are pursued in isolation and without an understanding of the contexts in which they are implemented. Through grants and other activities, we build the capacity of people working in educational organizations to change how they work by emphasizing systems and design thinking, iteration, and knowledge sharing within and across organizations.

Two recent surveys by Carnegie Corporation of New York and Gallup offer insights into how our education system can better help all Americans navigate job and career choices

Join Us in This Ambitious Endeavor

Our approach of supporting multiple stakeholders by pulling multiple levers is informed by our deep understanding of the system we’re trying to move. American education is a massive, diverse, and highly decentralized enterprise. There is no mechanism by which we might affect more than superficial change in many thousands of communities. The type of change that is needed cannot come from compliance alone. It requires that everyone grapple with new ideas.

We know from our history of promoting large-scale improvements in American education that advancements won’t happen overnight or as the result of one kind of initiative. Our vision for 21st-century education will require more than quick wins and isolated successes. Innovation is essential, and a major thrust of our work involves the incubation and dissemination of new models, resources, and exemplars. But we must also learn to move forward with the empathy, flexibility, and systems thinking needed to support people in making the transition. Novel solutions only help if they can be successfully implemented in different contexts.

Only a sustained and concerted effort will shift the center of gravity of a social enterprise that involves millions of adults and many tens of millions of young people. The challenge of philanthropy is to effect widespread social change with limited resources and without formal authority. This takes more than grantmaking. At the Corporation, we convene, communicate, and form coalitions. We provide thought leadership, issue challenges, and launch new initiatives. Through these multifaceted activities, we maximize our ability to forge, share, and put into practice powerful new ideas that build a foundation for more substantial changes in the future.

We encourage everyone who plays a role in education to join us in this work. Our strategy represents more than our priorities as a grantmaker. It conveys our strong beliefs about how to get American education to where it needs to be. The more organizations and individuals we have supporting those who are working to provide students with what they need, the more likely we are to succeed in this ambitious endeavor. 

LaVerne Evans Srinivasan is the vice president of Carnegie Corporation of New York’s National Program and the program director for Education.

TOP: Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, a lower-school substitute teacher works from her home in Arlington, Virginia, on April 1, 2020. Her role in the school changed significantly due to the pandemic. Whereas she previously worked part-time to support teachers when they needed to be absent from the classroom, amid COVID-19 she now helps teachers to build skills with new digital platforms so they can continue to teach in the best way for their students and their families. (Credit: Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

More than half of American counties are without access or have very limited access to local news. Political scientist and Andrew Carnegie Fellow Joshua P. Darr has been studying what the loss of local news means for American communities

School districts, local colleges, businesses, and donors have come together to help thousands of low-income students in Southern California achieve career readiness and attend local colleges

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The U.S. Education System Isn’t Giving Students What Employers Need

• Michael Hansen

Companies also need to stop fixating on the four-year degree.

There’s a direct disconnect between education and employability in the U.S., where employers view universities and colleges as the gatekeepers of workforce talent, yet those same institutions aren’t prioritizing job skills and career readiness. This not only hurts employers, but also sets the average American worker up for failure before they’ve even begun their career, as new employees who have been hired based on their four-year educational background often lack the actual skills needed to perform in their role. To create change as an industry, we must provide greater credibility to alternate education paths that allow students to gain employable skills. Now is the time for employers to increase credibility for skills-based hiring, to remove stigmas around vocational education, and to move forward to create equal opportunities for all students.

The Covid-19 pandemic stripped millions of Americans of their jobs. As of April 2021, the economy was still down 4 million jobs compared to February 2020. At the same time, we are seeing unprecedented labor shortages, with 8.1 million jobs open and unfilled across the U.S. Markets that saw explosive growth due to the pandemic, such as cybersecurity and technology , are struggling to maintain the levels of innovation needed to continue that trend, because they can’t find the right talent.

• MH Michael Hansen is the Chief Executive Officer of Cengage, an education technology company serving millions of learners worldwide.

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• Education at a Glance

Education at a Glance 2024

Characteristics of education systems, oecd indicators.

Education at a Glance is the authoritative source for information on the state of education around the world. It provides data on the structure, finances and performance of education systems across OECD, accession and partner countries. More than 100 charts and tables in this publication – as well as links to much more available on the educational database – provide key information on the output of educational institutions; the impact of learning across countries; access, participation and progression in education; the financial resources invested in education; and teachers, the learning environment and the organisation of schools.

The 2024 edition focuses on equity, investigating how progress through education and the associated learning and labour market outcomes are impacted by dimensions such as gender, socio-economic status, country of birth and regional location. A specific chapter is dedicated to the Sustainable Development Goal 4 on education, providing an assessment of where OECD, accession and partner countries stand in providing equal access to quality education at all levels.

English Also available in: German

• Equity in education and on the labour market
• https://doi.org/10.1787/c00cad36-en
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Education and Schools

Care Policies Take Center Stage in Harris’s Economic Message

The Democratic nominee says she wants to make raising a family more affordable. But she has provided few details on her proposals.

By Madeleine Ngo and Ben Casselman

The Youngest Pandemic Children Are Now in School, and Struggling

Teachers this year saw the effects of the pandemic’s stress and isolation on young students: Some can barely speak, sit still or even hold a pencil.

By Claire Cain Miller and Sarah Mervosh

Reopen N.Y.C. Libraries on Sundays? Yes. Free 3-K for All? Not Quite.

Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council reached a $112 billion budget deal that restored some unpopular cuts to key programs.

By Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Jeffery C. Mays

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Many New York City families counted on the prospect of free preschool, but hundreds were not immediately offered a seat and may have to travel across town to available spots.

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A social media account features smiley toddlers, while also offering positive lessons about child development.

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Many families were counting on a break from crippling child care costs. Mayor Eric Adams’s cuts have cast doubt on their expectations.

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A $30,000 Question: Who Will Get a Free Preschool Seat in New York City?

After Mayor Eric Adams made cuts to free preschool for 3-year-olds, families face increased uncertainty — and the prospect of enormous child care bills.

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The child care crisis, which has intensified since pandemic-era funding expired in September, is placing an undue and unhealthy burden on American parents.

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Her Son Was Promised a Special Education Class. He’s Still Waiting.

Mayor Eric Adams said all children who required preschool special education seats would have them. More than 1,000 such students lacked a placement last school year.

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Here’s where Trump and Harris stand on 6 education issues

Cory Turner

How the candidates differ on their views and policies on education

Presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will face off in a debate on Tuesday. LA Johnson/NPR hide caption

As presidential candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump don’t have a lot in common when it comes to their views on education.

Trump has said America’s public schools “have been taken over by the radical Left maniacs,” and that he wants to close the U.S. Department of Education.

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Harris has vowed to keep the department open.

Democrats are for free, universal preschool for all 4-year-olds.

Republicans are for universal school choice, where parents have the power — and the public dollars — to enroll their children in any school they want, whether it’s public or private.

6 takeaways from Harris' interview on CNN

The list goes on.

Ahead of the candidates’ only scheduled debate, in Philadelphia on Tuesday, we’ve put together a handy primer of their education views.

1. On closing the U.S. Department of Education

Trump, in an interview on X , told Elon Musk that, if elected, “I want to close up the Department of Education, move education back to the states.”

Harris didn’t talk much about education in her DNC speech , but she did parry Trump’s plan: “We are not going to let him eliminate the Department of Education that funds our public schools.”

A quick explanatory comma about that funding: Most public school funding comes from states and local communities. But the department does administer two large funding streams, now more than $30 billion, that Congress codified into law decades ago to help schools educate 1.) children with disabilities and 2.) kids living in low-income communities.

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It’s not clear if Trump’s desire to close the department would also mean disrupting this funding.

Project 2025, a blueprint for the next Republican presidency that included input from Trump loyalists, recommends closing the department, turning both funding streams into no-strings-attached grants and phasing out the low-income support dollars within 10 years.

But the Trump campaign has disavowed Project 2025. NPR asked the campaign to clarify its position on funding for children with disabilities and kids living in low-income communities, and press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded: “ President Trump will ensure a great education for every child by returning our education system to the states where it belongs.”

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The Education Department debate isn’t just financial. It’s also symbolic.

Trump and some Republicans believe, fundamentally, that education should only be a local and state concern, as there’s no mention of a federal role in education in the U.S. Constitution. To them the department is the poster child for government overreach, which is why Republicans have been calling for the department’s dissolution ever since it was created in 1979.

Where Republicans see local control of education as an inherently good thing, allowing schools to better reflect the values of their communities, Harris and many Democrats also see inequity in some districts’ inability (and sometimes unwillingness) to serve marginalized students.

Congress created those funding streams to help level the playing field and to give the department the ability to hold districts accountable when they fall short on civil rights. Harris has previously backed increasing funding for low-income students and children with disabilities.

Disagreements aside, can the department be shut down?

How schools (but not necessarily education) became central to the Republican primary

Not by the president, no. It was created by Congress, and only Congress can close it. Some House Republicans have tried , but there’s simply not enough support, not just among Democrats but Republicans, too. Public surveys show even a majority of Republicans believe the U.S. government should be spending more, not less, on education.

Keep in mind, eight years ago then-presidential candidate Donald Trump suggested he might try to close the Education Department. He then got his chance as president — with Republican control of Congress — but never forced the issue.

2. On sex-based discrimination in schools, aka Title IX

In April, the Biden-Harris administration expanded protections against sex discrimination in schools to include sexual orientation and gender identity. Meaning, among other things, it believes students should be allowed to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity.

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This is not a change in federal law. That requires Congress. It’s a change in interpretation of the law, known as Title IX, courtesy of new regulations from the U.S. Department of Education.

Trump and many Republicans see this expanded interpretation of Title IX as Democrats imposing liberalism on schools. In a recent call with reporters, representatives of the Trump campaign and the RNC repeatedly derided what they called Harris’ “radical gender ideology.”

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If this sounds all-too-familiar, that’s because this is an old fight. In 2016, the Obama administration issued guidance to schools , telling them that students should be allowed to use the bathroom facilities that correspond with their gender identity.

In early 2017, the nascent Trump administration quickly moved in the opposite direction, abandoning that interpretation of the law.

Protesting these latest Biden administration provisions, roughly half of all states have sued the department, and the courts have blocked the Education Department from enforcing the regulations in those states. Trump has said, if re-elected, he would roll back the rule, just as he did the old Obama-era guidance.

3. On school choice

We’re using “choice” here broadly because many of Trump’s education proposals shoot from the same root: That parents should have total or near-total control over their child’s education.

First, he’s calling for universal school choice. This would, in theory, take public dollars normally spent on a child’s public education and give them directly to parents to spend at whatever school they want, whether it’s public, private or homeschooling at the kitchen table.

Report: Last year ended with a surge in book bans

He has also called for a Parental Bill of Rights and for school principals to be hired — and fired — by parents. “If any principal is not getting the job done, the parents should be able to vote to fire them and select someone who will. This will be the ultimate form of local control,” Trump said in July.

Trump also wants to make it easier to fire “bad” teachers, by ending tenure protections, and to reward strong teachers with merit pay. “If we have pink-haired Communists teaching our kids, we have a major problem. When I am president, we will put PARENTS back in charge and give them the final say,” he said.

It’s difficult to imagine how a second Trump administration could implement these ideas around school choice or principal and teacher retention, though, as the U.S. government has limited power to influence state and school district policy.

Democrats, on the other hand, made clear in their 2024 platform that they’re against any effort that could weaken the nation’s public schools. “We oppose the use of private-school vouchers, tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships, and other schemes that divert taxpayer-funded resources away from public education. Public tax dollars should never be used to discriminate.”

That’s likely a reference to the fact that, in some state voucher programs, a private school is allowed to reject children with disabilities if it doesn’t believe it has the staff or resources to meet their needs. Federal law requires that schools that receive federal funding provide kids with disabilities a free and appropriate public education.

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In a letter to Harris , some two-dozen grassroots education groups urged her not to choose Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to be her running mate, because of his previous support for private-school vouchers . She ultimately chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former public school teacher and coach.

Harris has been an outspoken supporter of public education and has been courting educators’ support. In a speech to the American Federation of Teachers, she told the crowd, “We need you so desperately right now,” and called it “the most noble of work, teaching other people’s children.”

As part of her presidential bid in 2019, Harris proposed a $300 billion plan to raise teacher pay. Though she has not revived the plan, she did tell the AFT, “God knows we don’t pay you enough.”

4. On early childhood education and support

Harris and Democrats have talked as much, if not more, about early childhood education and childcare than they have about K-12 policies. Harris has proposed expanding the Child Tax Credit after a brief, pandemic-era expansion dramatically cut child poverty , and she pitched an even larger boost of up to $6,000 for newborns.

The Democrats’ 2024 platform also includes support for free, universal preschool for 4-year-olds, something the Biden-Harris administration had previously championed but was forced to abandon in negotiations with Congress.

Finally, there’s Head Start, the federally-funded program that provides child care and early learning for children from low-income families. The Biden-Harris administration has been a staunch supporter of Head Start, which serves children from birth to age 5. In her DNC speech , Harris promised not to let Trump “end programs like Head Start that provide preschool and child care.”

Harris was likely referring, again, to Project 2025 , which alleges Head Start is “fraught with scandal and abuse” and recommends eliminating it entirely. Congressional funding for Head Start rose during the Trump administration, in spite of the White House calling for modest cuts .

NPR asked the Trump campaign to clarify its position on Head Start funding. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded: “By returning our education system back to the states, our early childhood education system will thrive because parents will have more say in their child’s education and good teachers will be rewarded.”

5. On banning books and “divisive concepts”

Between July and December 2023, PEN America recorded more than 4,300 instances of school book bans, a big uptick from the previous year.

Of the books that were targeted in the 2021-’22 and ‘22-’23 school years, the nonprofit found that 37% grappled with race and racism and included characters of color, and 36% included LGBTQ+ characters and themes.

Trump has been an unabashed champion of efforts to limit how schools approach issues of race and gender. In 2020, he created the 1776 Commission , which lamented that “many students are now taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but rather villains.”

Since then, some states have passed laws curtailing what teachers can and cannot say in the classroom when it comes to matters of race and gender. And in July, as part of his Plan To Save American Education , Trump pledged to “cut federal funding for any school or program pushing Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content,” though it’s not clear how or if he could do that.

Kamala Harris used her speech before the American Federation of Teachers to blast Trump.

“While you teach students about our nation’s past,” she told the crowd of teachers, “these extremists attack the freedom to learn and acknowledge our nation’s true and full history, including book bans. Book bans in this year of our Lord 2024.”

6. On college affordability

The Biden-Harris administration went all-in on federal student loan forgiveness. Some of its plans worked , but the administration has so far failed to convince the courts that its most ambitious efforts at loan forgiveness are legal.

That may explain why, on the campaign trail, Harris isn’t talking much about future loan forgiveness, or making new promises. Instead, she’s largely backward-looking.

“Our administration has forgiven student loan debt for nearly 5 million Americans,” Harris told the American Federation of Teachers gathering, emphasizing that many of those Americans are teachers who received Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF).

As a senator and vice president, Harris has also supported efforts to make community college free, a commitment echoed in the 2024 Democratic party platform .

As for Trump, as president he previously tried to eliminate PSLF , and he and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, have both spoken out against broad loan forgiveness.

In 2023, after the Supreme Court blocked Biden’s first big effort, Trump celebrated : “President Biden is not allowed to wipe out hundreds and hundreds of billions, probably trillions, of dollars in student loan debt, which would have been very unfair to the millions and millions of people who have paid their debt through hard work and diligence.”

The 2024 Republican party platform pledges , “to reduce the cost of Higher Education, Republicans will support the creation of additional, drastically more affordable alternatives to a traditional four-year College degree.”

Last year, Trump unveiled plans for an online college alternative he’s calling The American Academy: “We will take the billions and billions of dollars that we will collect by taxing, fining, and suing excessively large private university endowments, and we will then use that money to endow a new institution… Its mission will be to make a truly world-class education available to every American, free of charge, and do it without adding a single dime to the federal debt.”

Considering more than 70 million American students are enrolled in school, from K-12 to college , let’s hope the candidates get a chance to debate their ideas and their differences on Tuesday.

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Where Trump and Harris stand on 6 education issues

Trump has said public schools “have been taken over by the radical left maniacs,” and that he wants to close the department of education. harris has vowed to keep it open..

• Cory Turner, NPR

Presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will face off in a debate on Tuesday. LA Johnson/NPR

1. On closing the U.S. Department of Education

2. on sex-based discrimination in schools, aka title ix, 3. on school choice, related content.

Raise taxes on the rich or cut them? Harris, Trump differ on how to boost the U.S. economy

The two presidential nominees are using the week before their debate to sharpen their economic messages about who could do more for the middle class.

4. On early childhood education and support

5. on banning books and “divisive concepts”.

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Texas school districts say upgrades to the state’s student data reporting system could hurt their funding

The Texas Education Agency says there’s time to fix problems before officially reported data is used to determine how much money districts get.

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Upgrades to the system Texas uses to collect student, staff and financial data from school districts are causing serious concerns among school administrators and data specialists across the state who say the changes have led to thousands of unresolved errors that could potentially cause them to lose out on state funding.

Each of Texas’ more than 1,200 school districts is required to regularly submit data to the state, including information on attendance, enrollment, students who receive special education, children experiencing homelessness and the number of kids who have completed a college preparatory course. State officials use the information to determine whether schools are meeting performance standards and how much funding they receive each year.

Three years ago, the Texas Education Agency announced major changes to the reporting system. The goal was to make it easier for school districts and the state to share data and reduce the amount of manual labor required from school officials. Districts were supportive of the proposed changes.

Almost a dozen other states are using the same standard on which Texas based its system upgrade, said Eric Jansson, vice president of technology for Ed-Fi Alliance, the organization that created the standard. Texas is the largest state to implement the changes.

More than 300 districts participated in the pilot program during the last school year, according to the TEA. All school districts began using the new system this school year.

Before the upgrade, school districts would submit data directly to the TEA after working with a software vendor that would ensure the education agency didn’t have any problems interpreting the information.

Under the new arrangement, the software vendors are now responsible for transmitting the data to the state, a change that school officials say leaves them without a chance to fact-check the information before it goes out.

They also say a litany of errors and inaccuracies surfaced during the pilot program. In some instances, hundreds of student records — from enrollment figures to the number of students in certain programs — did not show up correctly.

A TEA spokesperson said the agency is confident districts will have ample time to resolve any errors between now and the first reporting deadline on Dec. 12. The agency also noted that districts have until Jan. 16 to resubmit any data needing corrections.

But districts say they have no idea how to solve some errors. Their concerns, shared in interviews with The Texas Tribune, have not been previously reported.

In an August letter to TEA Commissioner Mike Morath, Lewisville Independent School District Superintendent Lori Rapp requested that the agency delay the full transition to the new reporting system until all districts are able to submit “100% of all data elements” successfully.

Rapp said thousands of errors surfaced after the district’s software vendor submitted data to the new system during the pilot. Her staff spent “tons of hours” trying to figure out why the miscalculations had occurred, she said in an interview.

While Rapp's staff had made some progress working with the new system since the pilot started, "[w]e have not been able to fully send, promote, and validate our data to the point where a successful submission could have been made," Rapp’s letter said.

After receiving the note, the TEA organized a virtual meeting with Lewisville ISD officials to discuss their concerns. Rapp said the state did not seem concerned about whether school districts were prepared to make the transition.

“Maybe because there’s no ramifications to them and the stakes aren't as high, they don't have a concern,” Rapp said. “But for districts, the stakes are extremely high, and it's a gross oversight on their part if they are failing to recognize that.”

While the TEA says it has resolved more than a thousand tickets submitted by school officials reporting problems with the new system, officials from nearly a half-dozen districts told the Tribune the state has not explained what’s causing some of the errors or told them if they have been resolved.

School administrators and data specialists who participated in the pilot say the implications of adopting a system that still doesn’t have a clear process to correct mistakes are massive. An inaccurate assessment of the students enrolled in Texas public schools could mean school districts receive less funding from the state. Schools are funded based on students’ average daily attendance, and they receive additional dollars if they have children with specific needs, like students with disabilities or kids learning English as a second language.

Funding has been a major point of contention between Texas schools and state officials in recent years. Many districts entered the school year having to spend more money than they have, largely because of the state’s rising costs of living and a half-decade of no increases to the base-level funding they receive from the state. Public school leaders remain upset that last year’s legislative sessions ended with no significant raises despite the state having a record $32 billion surplus.

Texas’ school accountability system also relies on the data school districts submit to the state. Some parents rely on those performance metrics to make decisions on where to enroll their children. Poor performance can also lead to state intervention — like it happened when the state ousted Houston ISD’s locally elected school board and superintendent last year.

Full accountability ratings have not been released in five years due to litigation over changes to how districts are evaluated. Many have publicly released their unofficial ratings to share their progress with their communities.

School districts say they can’t afford to have mistakes in their student data.

“I think everybody understands the situation that public education is in right now,” said Frisco ISD Superintendent Mike Waldrip. “And there is no confidence by anyone that I've spoken with that that data is accurate or will be accurate when it comes time to submit it to the state.”

School districts that have piloted the new system say they understand errors are part of the process. They just wanted more time to troubleshoot them before it went live.

“We need more answers around not only supporting the system to be successful, but while we are making sure that it's successful, how are we going to continue to assure that we're not suffering consequences for a delay or inaccuracies in the data?” said Mark White, assistant superintendent of accountability for the Tomball Independent School District. “And none of those assurances have been received by districts.”

A TEA spokesperson said the agency did not see a need to expand the trial period because the pilot showed the channels through which it receives data from software vendors worked.

The TEA said it plans to continue working with districts to help resolve any errors well before the first reporting deadline. The agency said districts should reach out if they are still experiencing problems.

Tammy Eagans, who oversees the student data reporting process for Leon ISD, said the agency was helpful throughout the pilot year whenever the school district had problems submitting information. She added that the task of switching to the new system may not pose the same problems for her small district of fewer than 800 students as it might for larger districts with thousands of children.

Still, she said she is “not 100% confident” that the system as it’s being rolled out works as intended. Extending the pilot “would not have been a bad idea,” Eagans said. But she is also hopeful that the education agency will be understanding of districts’ concerns and not blame them for errors out of their control.

The upcoming reporting deadline “just kind of puts a little extra pressure on us,” said Eagans, adding that she’s “a little nervous, a little apprehensive, but hoping that it goes smoother than I think it will.”

Other school officials say the pilot was unsuccessful, and if adopting the new system requires more time, the state should be willing to cooperate.

While districts’ summer data submissions are the largest and have major funding implications, each reporting period is significant in helping paint an accurate picture of a district’s latest demographic, financial and personnel situation. For Tomball ISD Superintendent Martha Salazar-Zamora, the looming fall reporting deadline — the first since the adoption of the new system — is the most important.

“If the data is inaccurate, then we live with that inaccuracy throughout the entire year,” she said. “So it has a lot of relevance on many levels.”

Mary Mitchem, a former TEA employee, said she started worrying about the system’s readiness shortly after she was hired in June to make sure the system met the needs of its users. Mitchem no longer works for the agency as of early August.

Within days of being hired, she said it appeared that no one had done the work to ensure the data coming from software vendors accurately translated into the education agency’s system. Having helped manage data systems for Texas school districts and worked on statewide software projects across the country, she said she was also surprised that, two months before the pilot was set to conclude, no one had audited or tested the system.

“You're converting a state accounting system, and you have to make sure it balances — you have to,” said Mitchem.

Mitchem sounded the alarm up the chain of command, but a supervisor told her that anything beyond making sure the data was flowing into the new system was the responsibility of the software vendors and school districts.

“It just blew my mind,” Mitchem said.

In early August, she sent an email to Morath saying, in part, “You will be in litigation if you don't help fix it, and it will be with the largest districts in the state of Texas.”

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Chinese families seeking to escape a competitive education system have found a haven in Thailand

CHIANG MAI, Thailand (AP) — The competition started in second grade for DJ Wang’s son.

Eight-year-old William was enrolled  at a top elementary school  in Wuhan, a provincial capital in central China. While kindergarten and first grade were relatively carefree, the homework assignments started piling up in second grade.

By third grade, his son was regularly finishing his day around midnight.

“You went from traveling lightly to carrying a very heavy burden,” Wang said. “That sudden switch, it was very hard to bear.”

Wang, who traveled often to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand for his job in tourism,  decided to make a switch , moving his family to the city that sits at the base of mountains.

The family is  among a wave of Chinese  flocking to Thailand for its quality international schools and more relaxed lifestyle. While there are no records tracking how many are moving abroad for education, they join  other Chinese expats leaving the country , from wealthy entrepreneurs moving  to Japan to protect their wealth , to activists  unhappy with the political system , to young people who  want to opt out  of China’s ultra-competitive work culture, at least for a while.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is part of the  China’s New Migrants package , a look by The Associated Press at the lives of the latest wave of Chinese emigrants to settle overseas.

Jenson Zhang, who runs an education consultancy, Vision Education, for Chinese parents looking to move to Southeast Asia, said many middle-class families choose Thailand because schools are cheaper than private schools in cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

“Southeast Asia, it’s within reach, the visa is convenient and the overall environment, as well as people’s attitude towards Chinese people, it allows Chinese parents to feel more secure,” Zhang said.

A 2023 survey by private education company New Oriental found Chinese families also increasingly considering Singapore and Japan for their children’s overseas study. But tuition and the cost of living are much higher than in Thailand.

Within Thailand, the slow-paced city of Chiang Mai often ends up being the top choice. Other options include Pattaya and Phuket, both popular beach resorts, and Bangkok, though the capital is usually more expensive.

The trend has been ongoing for about a decade, but in recent years it’s gathered pace.

Lanna International School, one of Chiang Mai’s more selective schools, saw a peak of interest in the 2022-2023 academic year, with inquiries doubling from a year earlier.

“Parents were really in a rush, they wanted to quickly change to a new school environment” because of pandemic restrictions, said Grace Hu, an admissions officer at Lanna International, whose position helping Chinese parents through the process was created in 2022.

Du Xuan of Vision Education says parents coming to Chiang Mai fall into two types: Those who planned in advance what education they want for their kids, and those who experienced difficulties with the competitive Chinese education system. The majority are from the second group, she said.

In Chinese society, many value education to the point where one parent may give up their job and rent an apartment near their child’s school to cook and clean for them, and ensure their life runs smoothly. Known as “peidu,” or “accompanied studying,” the goal is academic excellence, often at the expense of the parent’s own life.

That concept has become twisted by the sheer pressure it takes to keep up. Chinese society has come up with popular buzzwords to describe this hyper-competitive environment, from “neijuan” — which roughly translated means the rat race that leads to burnout — or “tang ping,” rejecting it all  to drop out, or “lie flat.”

The terms reflect what success looks like in modern China, from the hours of cramming required for students to succeed on their exams to the money parents spend hiring tutors to give their kids an extra edge in school.

The driving force behind it all is numbers. In a country of 1.4 billion people,  success is viewed as graduation  from a good college. With a limited number of seats, class rank and test scores matter, especially on the college entrance exams known as the “gaokao.”

“If you have something, it means someone else can’t have that,” said Vision Education’s Du, whose own daughters attend school in Chiang Mai. “We have a saying about the gaokao: ‘One point will topple 10,000 people.’ The competition is that intense.”

Wang said his son William was praised by his second-grade teacher in Wuhan as gifted, but to stand out in a class of 50 kids and continue to  get that level of attention  would mean giving money and gifts to the teacher, which other parents were already doing before he was even aware of the need.

Back in Wuhan, parents are expected to know the material covered in extracurricular tutoring classes, as well as what is being taught in school, and ensure their child has mastered it all, Wang said. It’s often a full-time job.

In Chiang Mai, freed from China’s emphasis on rote memorization and hours of homework, students have time to develop hobbies.

Jiang Wenhui moved from Shanghai to Chiang Mai last summer. In China, she said, she had accepted that her son, Rodney, would get average grades because of his mild attention deficit disorder. But she could not help thinking twice about her decision to move given how competitive every other family was.

“In that environment, you’ll still feel anxious,” she said. “Should I give it another go?”

In China, her energy was devoted toward helping Rodney keep up in school, shuttling him to tutoring and keeping him on top of his coursework, pushing him along every step of the way.

In Thailand, Rodney, who’s about to start 8th grade, has taken up acoustic guitar and piano, and carries around a notebook to learn new English vocabulary — all of it his own choice, Jiang said. “He’d ask me to add an hour of English tutoring. I thought his schedule was too full, and he told me, ‘I want to try and see if it’s OK.’”

He has time to pursue hobbies and hasn’t needed to see a doctor for his attention deficit disorder. After bonding with one of his teachers about snakes, he is raising a pet ball python called Banana.

Wang says his son William, who is now 14 and about to enter high school, finishes his homework well before midnight and has developed outside interests. Wang, too, has changed his perspective on education.

“Here, if he gets a bad grade, I don’t think much of it, you just work on it,” he said. “Is it the case that if he gets a bad grade, that he will be unable to become a successful adult?”

“Now, I don’t think so.”

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The next decade of education transformation: 5 reports to spur debate and discussion

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, rebecca winthrop rebecca winthrop director - center for universal education , senior fellow - global economy and development.

September 15, 2022

This year, the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings is 20 years old. In 2002, Gene Sperling founded the center to help advance the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals and was deeply involved with the establishment and early governance of the Education for All Fast Track Initiative, the predecessor of the Global Partnership for Education. We have traveled far over the last two decades. Much of the center’s work over the first decade was dedicated to this type of strengthening education ecosystems work at the global level. We have been proud to collaborate with many partners—often going from research to recommendations to action (e.g., the Global Business Coalition for Education , the U.N. Special Envoy’s Office for Global Education , the Learning Metrics Task Force , and the Education Commission )—to help elevate education on the global agenda.

Today, as CUE looks toward our third decade of work, we plan to build on our existing efforts to work with partners in education jurisdictions around the world to advance the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Since 2016, we have been partnering with approximately 100 partners in 40 countries around the world from governments to civil society organizations to the private sector to work collaboratively on identifying and scaling evidence-based, contextually relevant and impactful change. Working with our partners, we have worked across an array of important topics from understanding the range of competencies young people need to thrive in a fast changing world to identifying innovations that help leapfrog education to change management processes that help sustainably embed new approaches inside education systems to processes that center women and girls’ voices to advance gender-transformative educational approaches.

Faced with the deep impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic alongside the climate crisis, the rise of authoritarianism, increasing economic inequality, and a wave of fake news the U.N. Secretary General calls an “infodemic,” it is clear that education systems must not only recover from lost instructional time but deeply pivot to live up to their potential to be a transformative social service in communities around the world.

Moving forward, we will bring all our work together under the shared goal of transformation. We will focus our efforts, working even more deeply with our partners, to help advance education system transformation that can get jurisdiction leaders and their partners closer to the vision embedded in the SDGs: equitable and relevant education that helps everyone become a lifelong learner. Faced with the deep impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic alongside the climate crisis, the rise of authoritarianism, increasing economic inequality, and a wave of fake news the U.N. Secretary General calls an “infodemic,” it is clear that education systems must not only recover from lost instructional time but deeply pivot in order to live up to their potential to be a transformative social service in communities around the world.

To kick off our new vision for advancing education system transformation over the next decade, we are sharing five publications focused on transformation. We hope these inspire conversation and debate. They are intended to explore education transformation’s urgency, the hurdles faced, and the various pathways needed for advancement. These pieces can be explored in any order, and we invite you to read them, critique them, and share your thoughts with us.

1. ‘Transforming education systems: What, why, and how’

In this piece , coauthors David Sengeh and I provide a big-picture look at what transformation is, why it is important, and some steps to engage in a transformation journey. We argue that education system transformation should entail “a fresh review of the goals of your education system—are they meeting the moment we are in, tackling inequality and building resilience for a changing world, fully context aware, and owned broadly across society—and then fundamentally positioning all components of your education system to contribute toward this shared purpose.” We go on to propose three main steps that system leaders in particular can take to advance transformation in their community or country (Figure 1): This “participatory approach” to transformation draws on evidence from multiple countries on what are major barriers to and accelerators of education system change.

Figure 1. The participatory approach to transformation

2. ‘Transforming education for holistic student development: Learning from education system (re)building around the world’

This piece was developed through close collaboration with scholars in almost 10 universities around the world. The lead authors, Amanda Datnow, Vicki Park, Donald Peurach, and James Spillane, examine the twin questions: “What would it mean—and what would it take—to build education systems that develop every child as would that child’s own parents? Is there evidence that it is possible to (re)build academically focused education systems to support holistic student development?” They argue that this shift—from academic only to holistic development—is essential if systems are to transform to help young people thrive. To answer this question, they worked with 10 scholars—Juan Bravo, Whitney Hegseth, Jeanne Ho, Devi Khanna, Dennis Kwek, Angela Lyle, Amelia Peterson, Thomas K. Walsh, Jose Weinstein, and Hwei Ming Wong—to examine reform journeys across seven jurisdictions. With a focus on high and middle-income countries, they examined the barriers and strategies seven systems used to expand toward holistic learning, including in districts, states, or national ministries in Chile, Canada, India, Ireland, Singapore, the United States, and in the cross-national International Baccalaureate system.

Ultimately, they identified 10 major lessons coming out of the transformation journeys across the seven systems: 1) Engage diverse stakeholders, 2) Construct coherence, 3) Manage the equity and rigor tension, 4) Build social infrastructure, 5) Develop instructional designs, 6) Design educational infrastructure, 7) Balance common conventions with local discretion, 8) Distribute leadership, 9) Support infrastructure use, and 10) Monitor practice and performance.

3. ‘Systems thinking to transform schools: Identifying levers that lift educational quality’

This piece , coauthored by Bruce Fuller and Hoyun Kim, provides a deep dive into the historical roots of systems thinking and how it has informed approaches to education reform. It primarily draws upon the intellectual traditions and literature in high-income countries but also illustrates how these ideas have traveled to middle- and low-income countries. After reviewing the organizational levers inside education systems that touch classrooms, it outlines the diverse approaches to education reform informed by systems thinking. The authors argue that there are at least four distinct education change approaches inspired by systems thinking: 1) standards-based accountability, 2) instructional sub-system, 3) teaching guild, and 4) ecological approach.

Each pathway reflects a distinct analysis of the core problems holding back system improvement and where the power lies to address the problems. Ultimately, the authors argue that although it is not “either, or” in terms of selecting one pathway over another, there is a need in many parts of the world to thaw out “highly institutionalized habits and routines” in favor of harnessing the capacity to innovate and be responsive to particular community needs by local schools and education ecosystems. They conclude with a set of key questions leaders should ask themselves when reflecting on how to harness systems thinking for improving education.

4. ‘Shared priorities to transform education systems: Mapping recovery and transformation agendas’

In this piece , I argue that the United Nation’s Transforming Education Summit (TES) is a unique opportunity for education to be at the top of the global agenda, and to make the most of this moment, actors in the global education ecosystem will need to coalesce around a shared narrative, finding ways to work synergistically—not competitively—in education jurisdictions around the world. I start by reviewing the past success of the global education community in coming together behind the shared “access plus learning” narrative in the lead-up to the development of the SDGs. I then map the range of agendas generating attention and debate in the TES process, especially at the presummit meeting in Paris this past June. I argue that there is a broad distinction between those actors focusing on pandemic recovery versus those focused on longer-term transformation. But while both approaches are needed—and indeed complementary—there is a need to forge closer linkages across agendas.

The piece highlights six of the main agendas prominently discussed in the TES process to date and analyzes them in relation to the level of support they receive by global actors versus actors representing “voices inside the system”—namely students, parents, teachers, local civil society, and governments. While this analysis only highlights some of the agendas and debates underway, it offers three recommendations in order to catalyze dialogue around where there are clear areas of synergy and where deeper discussion is needed: 1) Work collaboratively on addressing equity and inclusion, which is a broadly shared priority, 2) find ways of working more closely together across complementary agendas focused on building young people’s competence and capability—namely foundational learning, student well-being, and 21st century skills for work and citizenship, and 3) engage in deep discussions on who has the power—global versus voices inside the system actors—to define the purpose of education and guide transformation efforts.

5. Big Education Conversation

Together with a coalition of partners, including Big Change in the United Kingdom alongside multiple government and civil society actors, CUE is launching at TES the global Big Education Conversation . This initiative draws on CUE’s research on mapping the purpose of education across family members, teachers, students, and school leaders as an approach to kickstart conversations about education transformation in communities. One year ago, CUE launched “ Collaborating to transform and improve systems: A playbook for family-school engagement ” and has since been piloting the playbook’s Conversation Starter Tools (surveys and conversation guidance) in over 10 countries across the Americas, Africa, and Asia.

Last year Big Change adapted CUE’s survey questions as part of a national Big Education Conversation in the U.K. about the purpose of education. As described above in the first “P” (Purpose) of the participatory approach to education, there is strong evidence to suggest that developing a shared understanding across society of the goals of the education system can accelerate transformation and failing to do so can block it. Hence, the Big Education Conversation initiative is a scalable tool to catalyzing discussions around the purpose of education and can be used by decisionmakers to advance participatory policymaking and by youth, parent, teacher, or community networks to catalyze demand for opening dialogue around the purpose of education. CUE team members Akilah Allen, Emily Morris, Laura Nora, Sophie Partington, Claire Sukumar, and I are leading this work and invite anyone to take up and use the Big Education Conversation approach in their communities and countries.

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UNESCO Strengthen ALS Implementations for Junior High School in the Philippines

Manila, the Philippines - From March to June 2024, UNESCO successfully completed a series of national capacity-building training in Manila, the Philippines. These sessions were designed to enhance the use of Alternative Learning Systems modules throughout the country. T he trainings aimed to equip educators with understanding on the use of learning resources and the necessary skills to more effectively teach and engage junior high school learners.   

The series of trainings were attended by approximately 300 participants including the regional directors and educational leaders from the 17 regions of the Philippines. The participants delved into ALS policies and programs implemented by the Department of Education (DepEd), the activities of UNESCO’s initiatives in the region, and practical applications of ALS session guides and learners’ modules. These learning resources were developed by UNESCO in collaboration with DepEd’s Bureau of Alternative Education.  

Assistant Secretary Janir T. Datukan emphasised the significance of these trainings in his opening remarks.

This training is very important in empowering ALS field implementers and ALS teachers. It provides the necessary support in the delivery of learning contents based on the newly developed ALS modules intended for Junior High School level

Besides providing the participants with the knowledge to utilise and deliver the content of the ALS modules, the trainings served as a platform for enhancing collaboration among ALS program coordinators at both national and regional levels.   

During the closing of the first batch of the training, Dr. Margarita C. Ballesteros, Director of External Partnership Services at DepEd highlighted the importance of ALS in the development of the Philippines. “ALS provides opportunities for those unable to pursue formal education, offering them a second chance to complete their study. This system is one of the solutions for providing education to all and ensuring that no one is left behind” she said.  

These training sessions were part of the “Better Life for Out-of-School Girls to Fight Against Poverty and Injustice in The Philippines” project, implemented since 2017. The trainings were supported by the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) which envisioned to contribute to the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in the Philippines, particularly SDG 4: Quality Education.  

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• Access to education
• Girls education
• UNESCO Office in Jakarta and Regional Bureau for Science
• Partners: Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA)
• SDG: SDG 4 - Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
• SDG: SDG 5 - Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
• SDG: SDG 16 - Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
• See more add

This article is related to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals .

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