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FACT SHEET: How the Biden- ⁠ Harris Administration Is Advancing Educational   Equity

As Schools Reopen, Vital PK-12 Investments Will Address Disparities, Build Back Our Schools on a Stronger and More Equitable Foundation, and Enable America to Compete Globally

The last year and a half have been extraordinarily challenging for America’s students. As we prepare for the 2021-2022 school year, the Biden-Harris Administration is committed to helping every school safely open for full-time, in-person instruction; accelerate academic achievement; and build school communities where all students feel they belong.    At the same time, President Biden understands that addressing the immediate impact of the pandemic is not enough. For too many Americans—including students of color, children with disabilities, English learners, LGBTQ+ students, students from low-income families, and other underserved students—the promise of a high-quality education has gone unfulfilled for generations. Studies show the remarkable benefits of preschool programs , but such programs are too often out of reach for children of color and low-income children. Dramatically unequal funding between school districts means some children learn in gleaming new classrooms, while students just down the road navigate unsafe and rundown facilities . Amid a nationwide teacher shortage , high-poverty school districts struggle to attract certified staff and experienced educators. And students of color and children with disabilities face disproportionately high rates  of school discipline that removes them from the classroom, with lasting consequences. With 53 percent of our public school students now students of color, addressing these disparities is critical for not only all our children, but for our nation’s collective health, happiness, and economic security. Consistent with the President’s Executive Order , the Administration is committed to advancing educational equity for every child—so that schools and students not only recover from the pandemic, but Build Back Better. As First Lady Dr. Biden says, “Any country that out-educates us is going to outcompete us.” We will meet the challenges of the coming decades only by harnessing the full potential of every young person. Taken together, the unprecedented investments already made in the American Rescue Plan—along with those proposed in the Build Back Better Agenda—will devote historic and vitally-needed resources that unlock opportunity for millions of Americans. These investments in evidence-based approaches will shore up schools struggling with the aftermath of COVID-19, tackle inter-generational educational disparities, address the holistic needs of children, and incentivize states to help our schools rebuild on a stronger and more equitable foundation. To support the equitable education of every child at every step, the Administration will:

• Safely reopen schools and support students, particularly those disproportionately impacted by the pandemic;
• Invest in high-quality early childhood education, including providing universal pre-school for all three and four-year-olds and access to affordable child care;
• Address the national teacher shortage by improving teacher preparation, strengthening pipelines for underrepresented teachers, and supporting current teachers;
• Upgrade and build new public schools and child care centers;
• Expand college and career pathways for middle and high school students;
• Make a historic $20 billion investment in high-poverty Title I schools;
• Fund additional transformational investments to support the needs of the whole child, including community schools that provide wraparound services like afterschool programs, and hiring more counselors, social workers and school psychologists.

ADVANCING EDUCATIONAL EQUITY IN THE AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN The President made clear on Day One of this Administration that safely reopening schools was a national priority, signing an Executive Order that launched a comprehensive effort across the White House, Department of Education, and Department of Health and Human Services to safely reopen schools. The Department of Education has worked to support states and school districts in implementing CDC guidance for safe operations, and engaged education leaders across the country to collect and share best practices. The Administration has prioritized K-12 educator, staff, and child care vaccinations, and increased access to and awareness of vaccines among adolescents and their parents. States, school districts, and schools are supported in this work by the American Rescue Plan’s historic and needed investment in our schools. This included $130 billion to support the safe reopening of schools and address the academic, social, emotional, and mental health needs of students—including $122 billion through the American Rescue Plan’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ARP ESSER). This funding is being used to help schools safely operate, implement high-quality summer learning and enrichment programs, hire nurses and counselors, support the vaccination of students and staff, and invest in other measures to take care of students. Thanks to these efforts—combined with the Administration’s aggressive vaccination push and the hard work of state, district, school leaders, educators, and parents—the percentage of K-8 schools offering only remote instruction dropped from 23 percent in January to only 2 percent in May. The American Rescue Plan recognizes and addresses the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on underserved students . Districts and states must spend a combined minimum of 24 percent of total ARP ESSER funds on evidence-based practices to address lost instructional time and the impact of the coronavirus on underserved students, such as summer learning and enrichment programs, comprehensive afterschool programs, and tutoring. School and district leaders must ensure that these efforts respond to students’ social and emotional needs as well. ARP ESSER includes a first-of-its-kind maintenance of equity requirement to ensure that high-poverty school districts and schools are protected from funding cuts. The American Rescue Plan also includes additional funding for students with disabilities, students experiencing homelessness, Tribal education, nutrition security, broadband access, and child care for low-income families. ADVANCING EDUCATIONAL EQUITY IN THE BUILD BACK BETTER AGENDA The resources in the American Rescue Plan, however, are not enough to address the deep educational inequities that have existed in our country since its founding. President Biden’s Build Back Better Agenda directly addresses longstanding educational inequities and will revitalize our education system so that students have the opportunities to learn and prepare for jobs in tomorrow’s economy, which includes ensuring the needs of the whole child are addressed. Make a historic investment to support students in high-poverty schools . To ensure that every student—including those from underserved and under-resourced communities—can learn and thrive, the President’s discretionary budget request provides an additional $20 billion in funding for Title I schools. These investments will help address long-standing funding disparities between under-resourced school districts and wealthier districts:

• Providing meaningful incentives to examine and address inequalities in school funding systems. There is a $23 billion annual funding gap between white and nonwhite districts, and gaps between high- and low-poverty districts as well. A 2018 report from The Education Trust found that the highest poverty districts receive 7 percent less per pupil in State and local funding than the lowest poverty districts.
• Promoting competitive teacher pay. In 2017, public school teachers earned 18.7 percent less in weekly wages than their peer group of college educated workers, up from only 1.8 percent less in 1994. In many states, teachers with ten years of experience who head a household of four may qualify for public assistance.
• Increasing preparation for, access to, and success in rigorous coursework. Black and Native American students participate in AP coursework at half the national average . While 87% of low-poverty schools provide calculus, only 45 percent of high-poverty schools do. Lack of access to and preparation for success in mathematics and science coursework ultimately has a negative impact on the outcomes achieved by Black and Latino students in high-paying, in-demand STEM fields .   

Boost early childhood care and education The President’s Build Back Better Agenda makes historic investments in our youngest learners, so that every child can succeed, paving the way for the best-educated generation in U.S. history. Establishing universal preschool Preschool is critical to ensuring that children start kindergarten with the skills and supports that set them up for success in school. However, children of color are less likely to have access to high-quality preschool programs, resulting in disparate educational outcomes before students even enter kindergarten . Research shows that kids who attend preschool programs are more likely to take honors classes and less likely to repeat a grade, do better in math and reading , and are more likely to graduate from high school and enroll in college . Impacts are particularly strong for children from low-income families , and children with disabilities benefit from inclusive, accessible preschool programs with their peers . President Biden’s plan would establish a national partnership with states to offer free, high-quality, accessible, and inclusive preschool for all three-and four-year-olds. This will benefit five million children, and save the average family $13,000 a year on preschool tuition. This historic investment in America’s future will prioritize high-need areas first, establishing universal programs in these communities, so that all students can access them, facilitating the creation of diverse classrooms that are best for all students. It will also enable communities and families to choose the setting that works best for them, whether that’s a preschool classroom in a public school, family child care provider or child care center, or a Head Start program. The President’s plan supports low student-to-teacher ratios, high quality standards, and inclusive classroom environments. Make high-quality child care affordable and accessible High-quality early care and education helps ensure that children can take full advantage of education and training opportunities later in life, especially for children from low-income families and children of color, who disproportionately lack access to good child care options and who face learning disparities before they even can go to preschool. President Biden’s proposal will ensure that low- and middle-income families can access affordable, high-quality, child care. The most hard-pressed working families would pay nothing, and families earning 1.5 times their state’s median income would spend no more than 7 percent of their income on child care for their young children. The plan will also provide families with a range of inclusive and accessible options to choose from, from child care centers to family child care providers to Early Head Start programs. Child care providers will receive funding to support the true cost of quality early childhood education, which will allow them to provide care that is accessible and inclusive of children with disabilities. The President’s investments in child care and preschool will also support early childhood educators, more than nine in ten of whom are women and more than four in ten of whom are women of color. One report found that nearly half rely on public income support programs. The President’s plan establishes a $15 minimum wage for these educators and ensures those with similar qualifications as kindergarten teachers receive comparable compensation and benefits. And the President’s proposal will extend the American Rescue Plan’s expanded Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit so that families can instead choose to get a credit for up to half of their child care expenses, saving up to $8,000 per year. Invest in our teachers.  Few people have a bigger impact on a child’s life than a great teacher. Unfortunately, the U.S. faces a large and growing teacher shortage . Before the pandemic, schools needed an estimated additional 100,000 certified teachers , resulting in key positions going unfilled, the granting of emergency certifications, or teachers teaching out of their certification area. Shortages disproportionately impact students of color and rural communities. In schools with the highest percentage of students of color, the percentage of teachers who are uncertified is more than three times as large as in schools with the lowest percentage of students of color. The percentage of teachers in their first or second year of teaching is 70 percent higher . While access to teachers of color benefits all students and has a particularly strong impact on students of color , only around one in five teachers are people of color, compared to more than half of public school students. The Build Back Better Agenda will increase support for teacher preparation and invest in Grow Your Own programs and year-long, paid teacher residency programs. These programs have a significant impact on student outcomes and teacher retention , and are more likely to enroll underrepresented teacher candidates, including candidates of color . The plan would also invest in teacher preparation at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and Minority-Serving Institutions. The President has also called for increased investments in certifications in high-demand areas like special education and bilingual education, and is urging Congress to invest in programs that leverage teachers as leaders, such as high-quality mentorship programs for new teachers. These investments will improve the quality of new teachers, increase retention rates, and grow the number of teachers of color—all of which will improve student outcomes like  academic achievement and  high school graduation rates , resulting in higher long-term earnings, job creation, and a boost to the economy . As more teachers stay in the profession, districts will save money on recruiting and training, and can invest more in programs that directly impact students. Expand career pathways for middle and high school students. Strong dual enrollment programs increase college enrollment, and graduation. High-quality career and technical education models have significant positive effects on high school graduation, increase college enrollment, and improve wages . The President’s plan would provide more students with access to high-quality career and technical education programs that expand access to computer science; connect underrepresented students to careers in STEM and in in-demand, high-growth industry sectors; that include partnerships with institutions of higher education, employers, and other stakeholders; and that allow students to engage in quality work-based learning opportunities, earn a credential, and/or earn college credit. Eliminate inequitable school infrastructure conditions . According to one national study, there is a $38 billion gap between the current infrastructure spending on schools and actual infrastructure needs. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives American school infrastructure a grade of D+. Students of color are more likely to attend schools with rundown and unsafe facilities . Poor physical school conditions are associated with increased rates of student absenteeism, with one study finding poor ventilation associated with a 10 to 20 percent increase in student absences . While the American Rescue Plan provides critical resources for improving ventilation systems, it does not provide sufficient resources to address all health and safety needs, let alone long-overdue investments to increase energy efficiency, ensure our schools have the technology and labs to prepare students for jobs in tomorrow’s economy, or build new buildings where needed. President Biden’s plan supports investments to upgrade and build new public schools, ensuring that all our children have equal access to healthy learning environments that prepare them for success. It also invests in upgrading child care facilities and increasing the supply of child care in areas that need it most. Addressing lead in schools . There is no safe level of lead exposure for children. Lead can slow development and cause learning, behavior, and hearing problems in children, as well as lasting kidney and brain damage. Communities of color are at a higher risk of lead exposure. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework would make significant investments towards the elimination of all lead pipes and service lines in the country, and reduce lead exposure in our schools and child care facilities, improving the health of our country’s children, including in communities of color. Increasing broadband access for students and families . Broadband internet is critical to learning. Yet, by one definition, more than 30 million Americans live in areas where there is no broadband infrastructure that provides minimally acceptable speeds. In urban areas, there is a stark digital divide: a much higher percentage of white families report having a home broadband internet than Black, or Latino families . Native families in their tribal communities also lack sufficient access to high-speed internet. One Michigan study found that 47 percent of students who lived in rural areas had broadband access at home, compared to 77 percent of those in suburban areas. The last year made painfully clear the cost of these disparities, particularly for students who struggled to connect while learning remotely. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework would make historic investments in building “future proof” broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas, so that we finally reach 100 percent high-speed broadband coverage. Electrifying school buses for safe student travel . One study finds that when children ride buses with clean air technologies, they experience lower exposures to air pollution, less pulmonary inflammation, and reduced absenteeism. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework would make a down payment on electrifying our yellow school bus fleet. Increase support for children with disabilities. All children, including those with disabilities, should be provided the services and support they need to thrive in school and graduate ready for college or a career. The discretionary request provides an historic $2.6 billion increase for Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) grants that support special education and related services for children with disabilities in grades preschool through 12. This funding would, for the first time in eight years, increase the federal share of the cost of providing services to children with disabilities, and is a significant first step toward fully funding IDEA. The discretionary request also includes an additional $250 million for IDEA Part C, which supports early intervention services for infants and toddlers with disabilities or delays, and funds services that have a proven track record of improving academic and developmental outcomes. This increase in funding would be paired with reforms to improve access to these vital services for underserved children, including children of color and children from low-income families. Prioritize the physical and mental well-being of students. The discretionary request provides $1 billion to increase the number of counselors, nurses, and mental health professionals in schools, prioritizing high-poverty schools. Support full-service community schools. Community schools play a critical role in providing comprehensive wrap-around services to students and their families, from afterschool to adult education opportunities to health and nutrition services. The discretionary request increases funding for these schools from $30 million to $443 million, an over ten-fold increase. Foster diverse schools. Schools play vital roles in bringing communities together. But, too many of the nation’s schools are still largely segregated by race and class , mirroring their communities. The discretionary request includes $100 million for a new voluntary grant program to help communities develop and implement strategies to build more diverse student bodies. As part of their application, applicants would be required to demonstrate strong student, family, teacher, and community involvement in their plans. Applicants would have flexibility to develop and implement school diversity plans that reflect their individual needs and circumstances, and improve educational opportunities and outcomes for students.

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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)

Whether you call it digital, information, news, visual, or media literacy — it is vital for civic engagement and democracy

Five nonprofits work together to help low-income young people tap their cultural wealth and thrive in college and careers 

The turning point: Why we must transform education now

Global warming. Accelerated digital revolution. Growing inequalities. Democratic backsliding. Loss of biodiversity. Devastating pandemics. And the list goes on. These are just some of the most pressing challenges that we are facing today in our interconnected world.

The diagnosis is clear: Our current global education system is failing to address these alarming challenges and provide quality learning for everyone throughout life. We know that education today is not fulfilling its promise to help us shape peaceful, just, and sustainable societies. These findings were detailed in UNESCO’s Futures of Education Report in November 2021 which called for a new social contract for education.

That is why it has never been more crucial to reimagine the way we learn, what we learn and how we learn. The turning point is now. It’s time to transform education. How do we make that happen?

Here’s what you need to know. 

Why do we need to transform education?

The current state of the world calls for a major transformation in education to repair past injustices and enhance our capacity to act together for a more sustainable and just future. We must ensure the right to lifelong learning by providing all learners - of all ages in all contexts - the knowledge and skills they need to realize their full potential and live with dignity. Education can no longer be limited to a single period of one’s lifetime. Everyone, starting with the most marginalized and disadvantaged in our societies, must be entitled to learning opportunities throughout life both for employment and personal agency. A new social contract for education must unite us around collective endeavours and provide the knowledge and innovation needed to shape a better world anchored in social, economic, and environmental justice.  

What are the key areas that need to be transformed?

• Inclusive, equitable, safe and healthy schools

Education is in crisis. High rates of poverty, exclusion and gender inequality continue to hold millions back from learning. Moreover, COVID-19 further exposed the inequities in education access and quality, and violence, armed conflict, disasters and reversal of women’s rights have increased insecurity. Inclusive, transformative education must ensure that all learners have unhindered access to and participation in education, that they are safe and healthy, free from violence and discrimination, and are supported with comprehensive care services within school settings. Transforming education requires a significant increase in investment in quality education, a strong foundation in comprehensive early childhood development and education, and must be underpinned by strong political commitment, sound planning, and a robust evidence base.

• Learning and skills for life, work and sustainable development

There is a crisis in foundational learning, of literacy and numeracy skills among young learners. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, learning poverty has increased by a third in low- and middle-income countries, with an estimated 70% of 10-year-olds unable to understand a simple written text. Children with disabilities are 42% less likely to have foundational reading and numeracy skills compared to their peers. More than 771 million people still lack basic literacy skills, two-thirds of whom are women. Transforming education means empowering learners with knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to be resilient, adaptable and prepared for the uncertain future while contributing to human and planetary well-being and sustainable development. To do so, there must be emphasis on foundational learning for basic literacy and numeracy; education for sustainable development, which encompasses environmental and climate change education; and skills for employment and entrepreneurship.

• Teachers, teaching and the teaching profession

Teachers are essential for achieving learning outcomes, and for achieving SDG 4 and the transformation of education. But teachers and education personnel are confronted by four major challenges: Teacher shortages; lack of professional development opportunities; low status and working conditions; and lack of capacity to develop teacher leadership, autonomy and innovation. Accelerating progress toward SDG 4 and transforming education require that there is an adequate number of teachers to meet learners’ needs, and all education personnel are trained, motivated, and supported. This can only be possible when education is adequately funded, and policies recognize and support the teaching profession, to improve their status and working conditions.

• Digital learning and transformation

The COVID-19 crisis drove unprecedented innovations in remote learning through harnessing digital technologies. At the same time, the digital divide excluded many from learning, with nearly one-third of school-age children (463 million) without access to distance learning. These inequities in access meant some groups, such as young women and girls, were left out of learning opportunities. Digital transformation requires harnessing technology as part of larger systemic efforts to transform education, making it more inclusive, equitable, effective, relevant, and sustainable. Investments and action in digital learning should be guided by the three core principles: Center the most marginalized; Free, high-quality digital education content; and Pedagogical innovation and change.

• Financing of education

While global education spending has grown overall, it has been thwarted by high population growth, the surmounting costs of managing education during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the diversion of aid to other emergencies, leaving a massive global education financial gap amounting to US$ 148 billion annually. In this context, the first step toward transformation is to urge funders to redirect resources back to education to close the funding gap. Following that, countries must have significantly increased and sustainable financing for achieving SDG 4 and that these resources must be equitably and effectively allocated and monitored. Addressing the gaps in education financing requires policy actions in three key areas: Mobilizing more resources, especially domestic; increasing efficiency and equity of allocations and expenditures; and improving education financing data. Finally, determining which areas needs to be financed, and how, will be informed by recommendations from each of the other four action tracks .

What is the Transforming Education Summit?

UNESCO is hosting the Transforming Education Pre-Summit on 28-30 June 2022, a meeting of  over 140 Ministers of Education, as well as  policy and business leaders and youth activists, who are coming together to build a roadmap to transform education globally. This meeting is a precursor to the Transforming Education Summit to be held on 19 September 2022 at the UN General Assembly in New York. This high-level summit is convened by the UN Secretary General to radically change our approach to education systems. Focusing on 5 key areas of transformation, the meeting seeks to mobilize political ambition, action, solutions and solidarity to transform education: to take stock of efforts to recover pandemic-related learning losses; to reimagine education systems for the world of today and tomorrow; and to revitalize national and global efforts to achieve SDG-4.

• More on the Transforming Education Summit
• More on the Pre-Summit

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In the quest to transform education, putting purpose at the center is key

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, emily markovich morris and emily markovich morris fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @emilymarmorris ghulam omar qargha ghulam omar qargha fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education.

February 16, 2023

This commentary is the first of a three-part series on (1) why it is important to define the purpose of education, (2) how historical forces have interacted to shape the purposes of today’s modern schooling systems , and (3) the role of power in reshaping how the purpose of school is taken up by global education actors in policy and practice .

Education systems transformation is creating buzz among educators, policymakers, researchers, and families. For the first time, the U.N. secretary general convened the Transforming Education Summit around the subject in 2022. In tandem, UNESCO, UNESCO Institute for Statistics, UNICEF, the World Bank, and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) co-authored “ From Learning Recovery to Education Transformation ” to lay a roadmap for how to move from COVID-19 school closures to systems change. Donor institutions like the Global Partnership for Education’s most recent strategy centers on systems transformation, and groups like the Global Campaign for Education are advocating for broader public engagement on transformative education. 

Unless we anchor ourselves and define where we are coming from and where we want to go as societies and institutions, discussions on systems transformation will continue to be circuitous and contentious.  

What is missing from the larger discussion on systems transformation is an intentional and candid dialogue on how societies and institutions are defining the purpose of education. When the topic is discussed, it often misses the mark or proposes an intervention that takes for granted that there is a shared purpose among policymakers, educators, families, students, and other actors. For example, the current global focus on foundational learning is not a purpose unto itself but rather a mechanism for serving a greater purpose — whether for economic development, national identity formation, and/or supporting improved well-being.   

The Role of Purpose in Systems Transformation   

The purpose of education has sparked many conversations over the centuries. In 1930, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in her essay in Pictorial Review , “What is the purpose of education? This question agitates scholars, teachers, statesmen, every group, in fact, of thoughtful men and women.”  She argues that education is critical for building “good citizenship.” As Martin Luther King, Jr. urged in his 1947 essay, “ The Purpose of Education ,” education transmits “not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.” King urged us to see the purpose of education as a social and political struggle as much as a philosophical one.   

In contemporary conversations, the purpose of education is often classified in terms of the individual and social benefits—such personal, cultural, economic, and social purposes or individual/social possibility and individual/social efficiency . However, when countries and communities define the purpose, it needs to be an intentional part of the transformation process. As laid out in the Center for Universal Education’s (CUE’s) policy brief “ Transforming Education Systems: Why, What, and How ,” defining and deconstructing assumptions is critical to building a “broadly shared vision and purpose” of education.   

Education and the Sustainable Development Goals  

Underlying all the different purposes of education lies the foundational framing of education as a human right in the Sustainable Development Goals. People of all races, ethnicities, gender identities, abilities, languages, religions, socio-economic status, and national or social origins have the right to an education as affirmed in Article 26 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights . This legal framework has fueled the education for all movement and civil rights movements around the world, alongside the Convention of the Rights of the Child of 1989 , which further protects children’s rights to a quality, safe, and equitable education. Defending people’s right to education regardless of how they will use their education helps keep us from losing sight of why we are having these conversations.   

Themes in education from the Sustainable Development Goals cross multiple purposes. For example, lifelong learning and environmental education are two key areas that extend across purposes. Lifelong learning emphasizes that education extends across age groups, education levels, modalities, and geographies. In some contexts, lifelong learning can be professional growth for economic development, but it can also be practice for spiritual growth. Similarly, environmental education may be taught as sustainable development or the balance among economic, social, and environmental protections through well-being and flourishing — or taught through a perspective of culturally sustaining practices influenced by Indigenous philosophies in education.   

Five Key Purposes of Education  

The purposes of education overlap and intersect, but pulling them apart helps us interrogate the dominant ways of framing education in the larger ecosystem and to draw attention to those that receive less attention. Categories also help us move from very philosophical and academic conversations into practical discussions that educators, learners, and families can join. Although these five categories do not do justice to the complexity of the conversation, they are a start.   

• Education for economic development is the idea that learners pursue an education to eventually obtain work or to improve the quality, safety, or earnings of their current work. This purpose is the most dominant framing used by education systems around the world and part of the agenda to modernize and develop societies according to different stages of economic growth . This economic purpose is rooted in the human capital theory, which poses that the more schooling a person completes, the higher their income, wages, or productivity ( Aslam & Rawal, 2015; Berman, 2022 ). Higher individual earnings lead to greater household income and eventually higher national economic growth. In addition to the World Bank , global institutions like the United States Agency for International Development and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development often position education primarily in relation to economic development. The promise of education as a key to social mobility and helping individuals and communities improve their economic circumstances also falls under this purpose ( World Economic Forum ).   
• Education for building national identities and civic engagement positions education as an important conduit for promoting national, community, or other identities. With the emergence of modern states, education became a key tool for building national identity — and in some contexts , also democratic citizenship as demonstrated in Eleanor Roosevelt’s essay; this motivation continues to be a primary purpose in many localities ( Verger, Lubienski, & Steiner-Khamsi, 2016 ). Today this purpose is heavily influenced by human right s education — or the teaching and learning of — as well as peace education, to “sustain a just and equitable peace and world” ( Bajaj & Hantzopoulus, 2016, p. 1 ). This purpose is foundational to civics and citizenship education and international exchange programming focused on building global citizenship to name a few.  
• Education as liberation and critical conscientization looks at the centrality of education in confronting and redressing different forms of structural oppression. Martin Luther King wrote about the purpose of education “to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.” Educator and philosopher Paolo Freire wrote extensively about the importance of education in developing a critical consciousness and awareness of the roots of oppression, and in identifying opportunities to challenge and transform this oppression through action. Critical race, gender , disabilities, and other theories in education further examine the ways education reproduces multiple and intersectional subordinations , but also how teaching and learning has the power to redress oppression through cultural and social transformation. As liberatory and critical educator, bell hooks wrote, “To educate as a practice of freedom is a way of teaching that anyone can learn” ( hooks, 1994, p. 13 ). Efforts to teach social justice and equity—from racial literacy to gender equity—often draw on this purpose.   
• Education for well-being and flourishing emphasizes how learning is fundamental to building thriving people and communities. Although economic well-being is a component of this purpose, it is not the only purpose—rather social, emotional, physical and mental, spiritual and other forms of well-being are also privileged. Amartya Sen’s  and Martha Nussbaum’s work on well-being and capabilities have greatly informed this purpose. They argue that individuals and communities must define education in ways that they have reason to value beyond just an economic end. The Flourish Project has been developing and advocating an ecological model for helping understand and map these different types of well-being. Vital to this purpose are also social and emotional learning efforts that support children and youth in acquiring knowledge, attitudes, and skills critical to positive mental and emotional health, relationships with others, among other areas ( CASEL, 2018 ; EASEL Lab, 2023 ).  
• Education as culturally and spiritually sustaining is one of the purposes that receives insufficient attention in global education conversations. This purpose is critical to the past, present, and future field of education and emphasizes building relationships to oneself and one’s land and environment, culture, community, and faith. Centered in Indigenous philosophies in education , this purpose encompasses sustaining cultural knowledges often disregarded and displaced by modern schooling efforts. Borrowing from Django Paris’s concept of “culturally sustaining pedagogy , ” the purpose of teaching and learning goes beyond “building bridges” among the home, community, and school and instead brings together the learning practices that happen in these different domains.  Similarly neglected in the discourse is the purpose of education for spiritual and religious development, which can be intertwined with Indigenous pedagogies , as well as education for liberation, and education for well-being and flourishing. Examples include the Hibbert Lectures of 1965 , which argue that Christian values should guide the purposes of education, and scholars of Islamic education who delve into the purposes of education in the Muslim world. Indigenous pedagogies, as well as spiritual and religious teaching , predate modern school movements, yet this undercurrent of moral, religious, character, and spiritual purposes of education is still alive in much of the world.  

Beyond the Buzz   

The way we define the purpose of education is heavily influenced by our experiences, as well as those of our families, communities, and societies. The underlying philosophies of education that are presented both influence our education systems and are influenced by our education systems. Unless we anchor ourselves and define where we are coming from and where we want to go as societies and institutions, discussions on systems transformation will continue to be circuitous and contentious. We will continue to focus on upgrading and changing standards, competencies, content, and practices without looking at why education matters. We will continue to fight over the place of climate change education, critical race theory, socio-emotional learning, and religious learning in our schools without understanding the ways each of these fits into the larger education ecosystem.   

The intent of this blog is not to box education into finite purposes, but to remind us in the quest for systems transformation that there are multiple ways to see the purpose of education. Taking time to dig into the philosophies, histories, and complexities behind these purposes will help us ensure that we are headed toward transformation and not just adding to the buzz.   

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A New Vision for American Education

A book co-authored by tc’s sonya douglass horsford wins a critics’ choice book award. it analyzes policies long in the making and charts a new future for school leadership.

The Politics of Education Policy in an Era of Inequality: Possibilities for Democratic Schooling , co-authored by Teachers College’s Sonya Douglass Horsford , Associate Professor of Education Leadership and Founding Director of TC’s Black Education Research Collective (BERC), often feels as though it is speaking directly to the COVID pandemic and its impact on America’s school system. 

In fact, the book was published in 2019 — but it seems no accident that a text with profound insights into how the politics of reform and competition in K-12 education have worsened school inequality has been recognized by the American Educational Studies Association with one of its coveted  Critics’ Choice Book Awards for 2020.

Read  an interview  with Sonya Douglass Horsford about her book, education and the upcoming presidential election, and more. 

Horsford and her collaborators — Janelle T. Scott of the Graduate School of Education at the University of California at Berkeley, and Gary L. Anderson of the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University — employ critical policy analysis, an approach that spotlights connections between education and relations of dominance and subordination in the larger society. They focus on how “dismantling the government’s role in education limits the democratic possibilities of schooling.” They trace how market-driven approaches to education reform have ensured that “teachers, administrators, and students will be more mobile, leading to less stability and a weakening of professional expertise and organizational capacity.” They demonstrate that “a new generation of teachers and administrators is being socialized into a very different workplace with a different conception of teaching and leading.” And they lament a diminished faith in public education and the government’s ability to administer it, concluding that “when the market and private sector take over the role of the State or powerful corporations have inordinate power over the State, then citizens can no longer participate in a robust political democracy, but rather become resigned and passive consumers.”

IT LAUNCHED MORE THAN A SPACE RACE Horsford's book links America’s Sputnik-era fears of falling behind in global competitiveness to a resulting narrower conception of schooling. (Photo: Smithsonian.edu)

Horsford and her co-authors look back to America’s Sputnik-era fears of falling behind in global competitiveness in science and economic development. That reactive thinking, they argue, shaped a narrower conception of schooling. The result, today, is that “record levels of economic inequality and reduced social mobility amid widening and deepening class divides present tremendous challenges for school district leaders and education advocates committed to ensuring equality of educational opportunity for all students.”

When the market and private sector take over the role of the State or powerful corporations have inordinate power over the State, then citizens can no longer participate in a robust political democracy but rather become resigned and passive consumers.

The United States isn’t alone in wrestling with these challenges. Horsford, Scott and Anderson point to a similar dismantling of education as an institution for the public good in Chile, Australia, India and other countries, where, with similar “laser-like focus on producing human capital for international competition, schools are largely abdicating their responsibility to educate a new generation to defend democratic principles.”  

Exploring “a new vision for leading schools grounded in culturally relevant advocacy and social justice theories,” the book tells the story of how education policy has come to focus on markets, privatization, the expansion of charters and vouchers, and the training of a new class of “professionalized” and “managerialized” principals who are so hamstrung by “accountability” that they are unable to focus on their schools as humanistic institutions that nurture individuality, creativity and independent thinking.

A central thesis of the book is that although principals and district leaders have become divorced from a policymaking process that is now largely in the hands of politicians, philanthropists, think tanks and school reform organizations, they are essential to any efforts to create and sustain a system of education that does not treat students differently based on their race, culture, or zip code.

A limited focus on preparing school and district leaders for the politics of education and education policy not only undermines their ability to be effective administrators, but also to demonstrate the leadership capacity, political awareness, and advocacy central to leadership for social justice. 

The authors offer critical policy analysis as a framework for change. On one level they advocate for the building of bridges between policymakers and practitioners. But they also argue for instilling greater political savvy and a sense of realpolitik among education leaders:

“A limited focus on preparing school and district leaders for the politics of education and education policy not only undermines their ability to be effective administrators, but also to demonstrate the leadership capacity, political awareness, and advocacy central to leadership for social justice.”   

In their preface, Horsford, Scott and Anderson state that their goal is “to sound the alarm that that our public schools and our democracy are being diminished” — and they quote the journalist David Wallace Wells’ assertion (made about climate change) that “no matter how well-informed you are, you are surely not alarmed enough.”

Before you burrow under the covers and toss this book out the window, we want to be clear that we don’t see everything as gloom and doom. We are witnessing broad-based mobilizations around the world to defend democratic principles.

But, they also tell their readers, “before you burrow under the covers and toss this book out the window, we want to be clear that we don’t see everything as gloom and doom. We are witnessing broad-based mobilizations around the world to defend democratic principles.” Ultimately, their book, which includes descriptions of school leaders whom the authors consider exemplary “democratic professionals” and offers discussion sections after each chapter, is a practical guide for how to build on such work.

“This is a difficult time to be an educator if you view your job as keeping your head down and allowing reformers who are mostly non-educators to define you professionally,” they write “But if you are committed to your students and their families and communities, and are willing to struggle to change policies and practices inside schools and join with those trying to make changes outside of schools, than these are exciting times to be an educator.”

— Joe Levine

Tags: Education Policy Education Leadership K-12 Education School Choice - Privatization

Programs: Education Leadership Urban Education Leaders Program

Departments: Organization & Leadership

Published Wednesday, Oct 7, 2020

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Education: K-12

Education is the pathway to a productive life. All people need basic literacy, math skills, and knowledge of the world around them to function in today’s society and to be informed citizens. But despite increased spending, our educational outcomes as a nation are stagnant. How can the U.S. education system better prepare young people for their adulthood and careers? This brief gives an overview of the major topics within K-12 education and some ideas for reform with the goal of every student having access to an education that equips them with the knowledge and skills they need to be self-reliant and successful in the 21st century.

Table of Contents

Introduction, putting it in context, role of government, challenges and areas for reform, ways to get involved/what you can do, thought leaders and additional resources.

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View the Executive Summary for this brief.

Listen to the Trust Your Voice Podcast for an audio version of this brief.

Watch The Policy Circle’s Conversation with Education Trailblazer Ian Rowe

Why it Matters

A quality education provides the foundation upon which one can build a productive life. Yet, based on recent evaluations, U.S. education lags behind other developed nations and declined in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The latest 2023 report from the   National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), otherwise known as the  Nation’s Report Card, ” revealed the “ single largest drop in math in 50 years and no signs of academic recovery following the disruptions of the pandemic. “

Prior to the pandemic, studies of American students indicate little improvement in education over the last several decades, even though spending continues to increase.

Through education, students obtain a breadth of knowledge and learn fundamental skills for critical thinking, future learning, employment, independence, and the confidence to accomplish their dreams. A quality education provides opportunities to learn about the world and opens doors to determining and fulfilling dreams and ambitions, enabling individuals to establish themselves and contribute to society.

George Washington proposed the U.S.’s first public education system as he left office in 1796 “to grow the country economically, but also to create a well-informed populace to participate in America’s newly founded democracy.” In the 17th century, New England colonies and townships first established mostly religious-based schools, which evolved to primarily teach elite children how to read and write. The general public’s education depended almost entirely on families, communities, and churches.

The earliest form of what we now understand as “public schools” were called Common Schools . These schools were parent-funded by tuition and housed students of all ages – as young as five to adults – in one room with one teacher and sparse materials. With rapid population growth and mass immigration in the late 1800-early 1900s, public education became a way to provide social integration, English learning, and a shared experience among children from a variety of backgrounds in addition to academics. By the mid-19th century, education became almost entirely a public endeavor . A systematic structure for education truly began to take shape when schools became more publicly available and the federal government created the Department of Education in 1867 .  The purpose of the agency remains the same today: to collect information on educational outcomes and teaching, and to assist states in providing effective education systems. Federal aid to states periodically increased throughout the 20th century to include vocational education in agriculture and industry, and a surge in scientific, mathematical, and technical fields for national defense.

By the Numbers

The National Center for Education Statistics(NCES) report from 2019-2020 indicates U.S. schools number just under 130,000:

Public schools: 98,469

Pre-kindergarten, elementary, and middle: 70,039

Secondary and high school: 23,529

Other: 4,901

Private Schools: 30,492

Pre-kindergarten, elementary, and middle: 18,870

Secondary and high school: 3,626

Other: 7,996

 NCES reports that pre-k through grade 12 public school enrollment in the fall of 2021 totaled approximately 49.5 million , and 4.7 million students attend private schools. 

As of the 2020-2021 school year, public schools employ approximately 3,032,471 teachers , while private schools employ about half a million teachers .

Women make up just over 75% of all public and private school teachers. In public schools particularly, women comprise 89% of elementary school teachers, 72% of middle school teachers, and 60% of high school teachers.

Over $751 billion was spent on public K-12 education across local, state, and federal levels for the 2020 fiscal year . Here’s a regional look . Per pupil expenditures, also known as PPE, averaged $13,200 per student nationwide.

The U.S. Constitution does not directly address education. The 10th Amendment states: 

“ The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

In plain terms, this amendment limits the federal government only to the powers provided by the Constitution and gives states, and thereby the people, the power to govern themselves. The real beauty of this amendment is that our founding fathers sought to ensure State autonomy.

How does this work in education? First, the federal government passes legislation. In turn, the federal agency establishes regulations to implement the legislation, states determine their own laws and regulations, and, finally, local education agencies (school districts) establish policies to implement state laws and regulations.  

Legislation

Presently, the mission of the U.S. Department of Education is to promote “ educational excellence and equal access ” and provide a portion of monetary support to states. The U.S.’s very first piece of education legislation was the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) passed by Congress in 1958 to provide monetary support for schools to boost American competition with the Soviet Union” in response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik .

The next decade brought significant change to legislation addressing education in the U.S. and widely addressed equal access for all students. The Civil Rights Act of 196 4 expressly provides protections against discrimination in public education on the basis of race, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender, and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (specifically Section 504 ) expressly provides protections against discrimination against individuals with disabilities.  

Not only were these three pieces of legislation pivotal in providing protections against discrimination, but they also prohibit discrimination by recipients of federal funds. Quite simply, any state or local education agency that receives federal funds is prohibited from discriminating against students on the basis of race, sex, or disability.

Additionally, the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) provides federal grants to improve the overall quality of elementary and secondary education. Title I of the ESEA is a program that provides federal aid to local education agencies and schools with high percentages of low-income children. The funds are intended to help schools with additional resources to provide all children meet state academic standards. 

In 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) updated the ESEA and increased school accountability to educate disadvantaged students to the federal government. The law required states to test all K-12 students to indicate educational progress or lack thereof and linked federal funds based on test results. 

In 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) reauthorized the ESEA, replacing NCLB but maintaining the federal government’s requirements for schools to continually work to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged students. The improved ESSA offered new grants and funding for schools to provide more support to districts, schools, and resources for teachers to work towards the goal of a “full educational opportunity” for all students.

Federal money flows to states primarily through grants designed to minimize funding gaps. These grants rely on formulas that consider the needs of each state, the average cost of education for students, and estimated poverty data from the Census. For this reason, some states receive more than others ; Alaska, Mississippi, South Dakota, and New Mexico all received at least 13% of their revenue from the federal government in 2019, while New Jersey, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York received less than 5% of their revenue from the federal government.

According to recent data, of the roughly $771.1 billion in expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools during the 2019-2020 school year, only 8% came from the federal government. This includes contributions from the U.S. Department of Education and other federal agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services (which runs the Head Start program ) and the Department of Agriculture (which runs the School Lunch program ). The majority of federal funding usually comes in the form of Title I funds, special education programs, and child nutrition programs.

Another important source of federal funding is supplemental funds for K-12 schools to educate children with disabilities. The Individuals with Disabilities Act , specifically Part B, stipulates the U.S. government will assist states in the endeavor to provide special education and related services to ensure children with disabilities receive a free and appropriate public education, also called FAPE. In the 2020-2021 school year, the U.S. provided $11.6 billion to states for the purpose of educating 7.2 million (15% of the total) children enrolled in special education. The majority of the responsibility falls to the states, as outlined above. 

State and Local

The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment requires states to provide each child equal access to public education. Children are assigned to the nearest public schools based on where they live, also known as zoning . There are just under 50 million students attending 91,328 public schools in 13,452 school districts in the U.S. See a full list here .

At the local level, school districts are “governed by multiple-member boards that oversee school district policies, finances, superintendents, and collective bargaining agreements with teachers and other staff.” At the state level, each state has a department or agency that oversees elementary and secondary public education. An elected or appointed state executive , usually referred to as the superintendent of schools or chief school administrator, heads the department. At both the state and local levels, school board members are either elected or appointed by mayors or governors. School boards share authority with local government or state departments of education. See The Policy Circle’s Understanding School Boards Engagement Guide for more on this topic.

State legislators set state budgets and use funding formulas to determine how much each school district will receive from the state. Each state’s funding formula is meant “to diminish somewhat the high degree of inequality in revenues per pupil that would result if funding were based only on local taxable resources and the willingness of local citizens to tax themselves,” and thus “provide at least some limited degree of ‘equalization’ of spending and resources” for all districts across the state. The state applies funding towards operations (e.g. salaries and benefits for teaching, guidance counseling, materials like textbooks, transportation, and facilities like libraries) as well as maintenance and construction of public schools.

State and local funding are almost equal to a national average, with state governments providing around 47% of revenue and local governments providing about 45%. But individual state shares vary widely ; Hawaii has no local educational agencies, so almost 90% of funding comes from the state. On the other hand, the District of Columbia has no state government, so almost 90% of its revenue comes from local sources. You can see your state’s distribution in this Congressional Research Service Report (last updated 2019).

Revenues are raised mainly from taxes; state revenues mostly come from income and sales taxes, while property taxes generate local revenue. 

Spending and Outcomes

According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), total public elementary and secondary school spending amounted to $800 billion for the 2018-2019 school year). Per-pupil spending increased every year since 2015. The largest increase of  5% occurred during the 2019-2020 school year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Money can matter, but spending more on schools does not yield big improvements,” explains Mark Dynarski of Brookings Institution . Despite overall spending increases, the “ Nation’s Report Card ” from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reveals there has been little improvement in student performance since 2011. A 2019 report from Michigan State University analyzing long-term education spending trends found that, based on the NAEP scores, “ there was no clear correlation between spending increases and test improvements from 2003-2015.” According to the latest NAEP results as of June 2023, students scores in reading and math plunged.

U.S. student performance amidst higher spending has remained stagnant at an international level as well. In 2018, the U.S. average spending per K-12 student ($14,400, including capital expenditures) was 34% higher than the average spending for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries ($10,800). Despite the spending differences, results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which measures performance in reading, math, and science among 15-year-olds in dozens of countries every three years, show U.S. scores have not significantly changed since the early 2000s. The most recent PISA results, from 2018 , placed the U.S. 13th in reading, 37th in math, and 17th in science out of 77 education systems.

Evidence that indicates how money is spent, rather than how much money is spent, plays an important role in the conversation about funding for public schools.  Students in predominantly low-income districts often have the greatest need for educational services and resources. A 2018 report from the Education Trust compared the most recent data on educational spending and found that even if governments could decrease the per pupil spending gap with additional funds, the issue of equitable spending was still significant; meaning additional funds did not quite close the gap between available resources to schools, teachers, and, ultimately, students. 

How does this influence educational outcomes? 

Preliminary data suggest a link between state education finance reforms and higher test scores among students, higher rates of high school graduation, and better earnings among graduates. State education finance reforms typically increase overall spending and specifically increase spending in low-income districts relative to high-income districts. Because some reforms are not temporary increases, they allow lower-income schools to make long-term investments. Finance reforms have been shown to  reduce achievement gaps between high- and low-income school districts. A National Bureau of Economic Research paper found “ significant gains for students in poorer school districts in the wake of court-ordered state funding increases.” However, if either temporary or long-term finance reforms do not address or provide improvements to resources, curricula, and teacher development, the increase in outcomes is short-term.

“ Equalizing resources among districts is a poorly targeted approach for mitigating achievement gaps arising from differences in household incomes that exist within districts.”

Many education policy leaders, parents, and advocates are now increasingly raising concerns about how school funding is really being spent and where money is allocated. The national conversation about education, teachers, and funding has gained traction in the last couple of years as the country returns to pre-COVID conditions and outcomes are reported . 

Literacy is one of the most impactful areas of education. Explore how spending and other factors that impact education influence literacy in our brief: Failing Grade: Literacy in America

According to reports from state education agencies to NCES, the projected number of public school teachers is 3,032,471 in 2021, which puts the student/teacher ratio at 15.4. This is a 17% drop from 3,679,000 public school teachers in 2019. 

Each state requires its own qualifications to teach in K-12 schools; a teaching certificate, a bachelor’s degree, state licensure, or advanced degrees depending on the subject or “assignment” taught. At a minimum, states require individuals to become certified in the state to teach. The U.S. Department of Education indicates states are required to report teacher qualifications to the federal government to ensure qualified individuals teach students and that the state distributes qualified teachers equally. Information regarding teacher qualifications is “public information” which means the public has access to some, but not all, personnel records of district employees. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) protects the information. If you are curious about your child’s educator, contact your state or school district administration to inquire. 

Teachers’ pay is determined by qualifications, undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, advanced certifications, and experience. A public school teacher’s total earned income in 2018 was $62,200, while a private school teacher’s salary started at $50,340. Salary estimates for the 2020-2021 school year put public school teachers at $65,090 . Teacher pay fluctuates between states and even between neighboring school districts. See what your state pays teachers here .

In his 2017 study, “ Back to the Staffing Surge, ” Professor Ben Scafidi notes that “the productivity of American public schools has fallen rather dramatically over the past few decades. And, in retrospect, the staffing surge in American public schools has appeared to have been a costly failure.”

This video synopsis explains further (8 min):

Teacher quality matters when it comes to student outcomes. Hoover Institute Senior Fellow Eric Hanushek comments on a 2012 article “Great Teaching” that the “evidence shows that bad teachers cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost income and productivity each year that they remain in the classroom.” According to a University of Melbourne review of over 65,000 papers exploring the effects of various classroom interventions, “‘[a]ll of the 20 most powerful ways to improve school-time learning identified by the study depended on what a teacher did in the classroom.’”

PolicyEd explains why investing in good teachers pays off (1 min):

Since teachers must obtain minimum qualifications to teach K-12, which determines salaries coupled with experience, many seek to advance their qualifications. 

The U.S. Department of Education’s TEACH Grant Program offers up to $4,000 yearly to students who plan to become teachers who agree to serve four (4) years teaching in a high-need teaching field and underserved school. Another federal program offered by the DOE is the Teacher Quality Programs (TQP) which aims to “improve our nation’s schools and student achievement” by supporting state efforts to improve and retain quality teachers and principals and encouraging local education agencies to partner with communities and postsecondary schools.

Similarly, the National Education Association ( NEA ), one of the two main teacher unions in the nation (discussed below) offers grants to teachers for professional development and prospective teachers to aid in the costs associated with obtaining state licensure or certification.

Teach For America is a program that finds educational leaders and offers extensive leadership courses and opportunities to enhance their understanding of the needs of underserved populations. The program requires members to teach low-income students in a public school setting for at least two years with the goal of partnering with the community to better meet the needs of the students.

In the 2021 fiscal year, the federal government appropriated $5,571,845 for the National Professional Development Program which aims to improve instruction for English Learners.

Teacher unions originated as local associations and “grassroots efforts to support teachers through improved salaries, benefits, and working conditions.” The two largest unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) were first organized in 1857 and 1916, respectively, to represent the interests of the profession and improve salaries and working conditions for teachers. Now, almost 70% of all public school teachers affiliate with teachers’ unions or an employee association. 

Whether teachers’ unions’ effect is positive or negative remains a key debate in education reform. A 2018 study from the University of Michigan found that “ states with stronger unions saw more of the money earmarked for education actually reach the classrooms” or used for teacher compensation; whereas states with weak unions saw funding for schools being used to cut local property taxes. 

Unions acquire funding through donations, dues, and fees paid by members and non-members who stand to benefit from union efforts. Political spending and endorsements by teacher unions is an area of debate. . A Pennsylvania-based education policy organization, the Commonwealth Foundation , reported the NEA spent roughly $45 million on political activities in 2016-2017.

Unions faced considerable scrutiny over their resistance to returning students to  in-person learning in some states in the fall of 2020 and 2021. Forbes reports private and religious-based schools found creative ways to get their students learning again, which public school districts could have, but failed to, model to deliver students similar learning and instructional opportunities. 

Compensation

What was once occasional news, teacher strikes made headlines at the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year. The strikes bring attention to the issue of teacher pay, as it has in previous years, but additional federal funds in response to the COVID-19 pandemic spurred additional requests by teacher unions. Teachers in Columbus, Ohio went on strike for the first time since 1975 over salaries, classrooms, building conditions, student-to-teacher ratios, and resources, among other issues.

According to NCES data from 2016, 16% of public elementary and secondary school teachers have summer jobs and 6% have second jobs during the school year, which makes up 5-10% of their annual income. See this Business Insider report for a state-by-state ranking accounting for salary.

Real spending on education has increased by almost 40% since the 1990s , but teachers have seen little of this in their salaries. Per pupil spending increased between 1992 and 2014 by 27%, but teacher salaries decreased by 2% over that same period. Education scholar Frederick Hess calculated teacher salaries in West Virginia would have increased by more than $17,000 since the early 1990s if salaries had increased at the same rate as per-pupil spending.

On the other hand, substantial retirement and healthcare benefits make total teacher compensation higher than average salaries indicate. Public school teachers receive over $6 per hour in retirement compensation; the average civilian employee receives less than $2 per hour in retirement benefits. However, in some cases where school funding has gone up, payments go to paying down pension debt rather than funding better benefits for current teachers. According to Chad Adleman of Bellwether Education Partners , teacher salaries in Kentucky would be $11,400 higher “if the state wasn’t forced to spend vast sums paying down pension debt.” Paying for existing obligations remains a challenge that many states have yet to figure out.

The teacher strikes that were common in 2018 and 2019 had a lull during the coronavirus pandemic, during which time teachers had to manage “ unprecedented classroom concerns , such as masking, vaccinations, remote learning, and hybrid learning,” and found themselves “ on the front lines of a mental health crisis among adolescents who also incurred significant academic losses due to remote learning[.]” These demands and pressures have left many teachers citing burnout. In 2020, there was a record drop in public education employment, and in 2022 strikes restarted in cities from Minneapolis to Chicago to Sacramento.

Some states and districts are considering using leftover funds from the American Rescue Plan to offer raises and signing bonuses, but whether these incentives can spark long-term change and offset problems in the education system that have been growing for years remains to be seen. For example, staffing shortages are not new; student loan debt has increased, and many college graduates tend to select careers that pay more than teaching.

Education Choice

Another component of education reform debates centers around school choice. Some argue that families should be able to access the best school for their child, particularly among low-income or minority student groups, or students with specific educational needs such as autism or physical needs such as cerebral palsy. Advocates argue that if parents can choose the school that is best for their child, it can generate better quality educational options and promote greater access to higher quality or more specifically designed education. 

This report maintains that the public school system is designed to provide an equal education for all students to promote an equal, standardized education in the U.S.’s economic prosperity, funded by taxpayer dollars. As determined earlier in this brief, public schools are funded by the number of students who attend them; therefore, funding streams diminish if students seek an education outside the public education system. 

Recently, religious-based schools have received harsh criticism for taking federal funds but failing to provide a basic education to students . Students interviewed for the article stated they “graduated” from one of these schools but still had to teach themselves how to read and write. NYC Mayor Eric Adams called for an independent investigation. Here’s the link for the New York Times investigation .

Some are concerned that school choice may negatively affect public schools by taking students and funding away from struggling district schools, or those lower-income families with few additional resources will not be able to take advantage of school choice options.

The latest polling and report from Edchoice.org also showcases continued support for school choice policies from both school parents and the general public alike.

This video by Kite & Key Media gives an overview of the origins of and some of the problems with the education system (7 min):

School Choice Week further breaks down the types of schools in K-12 Education (2 min):

According to Edchoice.org , “School vouchers give parents the freedom to choose a private school for their children, using all or part of the public funding set aside for their children’s education. Under such a program, funds typically spent by a school district would be allocated to a participating family in the form of a voucher to pay partial or full tuition for their child’s private school, including both religious and non-religious options.”

There are 29 voucher programs operating in 16 states , Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, of which just under 250,000 students are recipients.

Tax Credit Scholarships

Tax credit scholarships “allow taxpayers to receive full or partial tax credits when they donate to nonprofits that provide private school scholarships. Eligible taxpayers can include both individuals and businesses. In some states, scholarship-giving nonprofits also provide innovation grants to public schools and/or transportation assistance to students choosing alternative public schools.”

There are 26 tax credit scholarship programs in 21 states , of which just under 330,000 students are recipients.

Education Savings Account (ESA)

Education Savings Accounts (ESAs)  are a more recent innovation in parent choice programs that “allow parents to withdraw their children from public district or charter schools and receive a deposit of public funds into government-authorized savings accounts with restricted, but multiple uses such as private school tuition or outside educational services.”

ESAs gained attention due to the coronavirus pandemic when Congress proposed the  Education Freedom Scholarships and Opportunity Act (EFS). Through an annual federal tax credit for businesses and individuals who donate to certain certified organizations, funds would pay for K-12 education options such as private school tuition, private tutoring, online classes, instructional materials for home education, and even after-school or daycare programs. In the short term, EFS serves as a means of providing emergency assistance to students and their families. The California Policy Center , for example, notes parents have been investigating options such as virtual schools, homeschooling, and private schools. Others argue this would undermine public schools that are struggling and facing budget cuts amidst the pandemic. Conversely, educational innovation has been a positive result of the COVID-19 pandemic as parents explore alternative, and possibly more appropriate, options outside of the public school system, and districts must now compete.

For more on ESAs and EFS, see The Policy Circle’s Education Savings Accounts Brief , or watch The Policy Circle’s Virtual Circle Discussion (46 min):

For a deeper exploration into School Choice listen to Sylvie Legeré’s Podcast Episode: Hostages No More with Guest Former US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

For what school choice options exist in your state, see the National Conference of State Legislature’s guide .

Vocational Schools

Vocational and career and technical education (CTE) is “‘organized education programs offering a sequence of courses which are directly related to the preparation of individuals in paid or unpaid employment.’” This avenue of career training provided students with labor market skills while preparing them for jobs in technical fields.

In the 1980s, there was a shift away from vocational and CTE classes as schools increased academic requirements for students. In an effort to push high school graduates to apply to college, vocational and CTE classes were dismissed by   claims that vocational training in high school would lead to “dead end jobs.” Conversely, some high school graduates likely will not succeed in college and seek gainful employment in a vocational skill or trade after graduation. This argument , combined with the reality of worker shortages in skilled professions , led to increased attention towards vocational and CTE training as the potential difference between high- and low-paying jobs for many students. In 2018, legislators proposed over 250 CTE-related bills in 42 states , mostly to increase state funding for programs, and the numbers have only increased since. 

The development of regional vocational and technical high schools , entire schools devoted to vocational and career-oriented instruction, also indicates vocational training is viewed as more than just auto mechanics. Today, it “ encompasses everything from welding, to sports management, to computer science.” Programs such as P-Tech , a partnership with IBM, and other programs incorporate dual enrollment opportunities with local community colleges or apprenticeships. Engaging with local businesses can also ensure students are getting skills that lead to employment, especially in a local job market. For more on CTE and vocational training, see The Policy Circle’s Creating Career Pathways Brief .

Early Childhood Education

Research is fairly clear that high-quality early childhood education is an important part of student success. Longitudinal studies find that “those who participated in these early childhood educational interventions persist in education, have higher earnings and commit fewer crimes than the control group.”

Some studies of government-funded preschool programs, such as Head Start, have found evidence of “ fadeout, ” which indicates that higher test scores early on fade as they move into grade school. While other studies show the programs work “particularly for students who otherwise would not be in center-based care.” According to the RAND Corp. , in preliminary assessments, “researchers found that returns of $2 to $4 were typical for every dollar invested in early childhood programs,” on top of social benefits such as school readiness that continue into adulthood.

Summer Learning Loss

“ Summer learning loss ” describes scores that decline over the summer, which results in students starting the year behind where they should be. According to a Brookings report, studies found on average, “students’ achievement scores declined over summer vacation by one month’s worth of school-year learning.”

This disproportionally particularly affects low-income students based on the “ faucet theory, ” that all students have access to resources during the school year, but the flow of resources slows or stops for students from low-income backgrounds.

Summer vacation can be important to help students retain, or even master, academic skills. Professor Paul T. von Hipper of the University of Texas at Austin claims “ every summer offers children who are behind a chance to catch up .” However, summer program coordinators have trouble attracting high-quality teachers as well as appealing to students and families to participate. Program costs are another dilemma, especially for low-income students. Professors David Quinn and Morgan Polikoff of the University of Southern California suggest that lower-cost home-based summer programming can still positively affect learning outcomes. Additionally, when extensive school-based options are infeasible, districts can pursue more cost-effective strategies such as targeted interventions for “students most at risk of backsliding.”

“The educational attainment of people living in rural (nonmetropolitan) areas has increased markedly over time but has not kept pace with urban (metropolitan) gains,” says the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service. Low populations of students and difficulty recruiting teachers present a challenge in rural areas. On the opposite end of the spectrum, inner cities and urban districts also face staffing and funding shortages. Problems associated with urban poverty, including housing, food insecurity,  high dropout rates, criminal justice system involvement, and high proportions of students whose first language is not English, also pose challenges to educators in inner cities.

Online Learning & The Digital Divide

Online education can be a cost-effective means to fill gaps and offer more course choices and access, but the quality of online schools varies greatly . Additionally, the issue of the “ digital divide ,” that not all households have access to reliable high-speed internet, presents a problem for many students. See The Policy Circle’s Digital Landscape Brief for more on the digital divide.

The problem has become even more prominent due to the coronavirus pandemic. A poll in California at the beginning of the pandemic revealed 50% of low-income families said they lack sufficient devices to access distance learning at home. Nationally, principals in the highest-poverty schools reported a full 20% of students did not have adequate access to internet services at home.

Online learning also requires technology proficiency for teachers and access to resources necessary to teach and virtually engage students. A RAND analysis of the American Educator Panel’s Fall 2020 COVID-19 Surveys found 80% of teachers reported feelings of burnout since the start of the pandemic, and two-thirds reported they did not receive adequate guidance on how to support students. Resources that support teachers can help them best implement personalized learning through flexible approaches and interventions for students at risk of falling behind or dropping out.

Detailed assessments of each school in the district can help identify what stressors impact the ability of children to learn, which, in turn, will help determine what resources can be leveraged to meet students’ needs. Understanding the needs of students, families, and communities can open avenues of communication with local philanthropic organizations, utility and technology providers, and businesses for public-private partnerships.

Professor Paul Reville of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education suggests taking advantage of youth-serving organizations and institutions to form “children’s cabinets,” which can “bring together community members, government officials, business leaders, parent organizations, and student organizations to develop strategies to better student outcomes.” For example , school buses outfitted with Wi-Fi were used as hotspots in South Carolina; Staples in Tennessee began printing materials free of charge for students who could not afford it; and partnerships with Comcast brought free internet to students in school districts including Caldo Parish, Louisiana, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania .

The Coronavirus & The Future of Schools

While some believe the negative side effects of learning disruptions will fade by the time students complete their education, the abrupt shutdowns brought to the forefront “ needs which have been so glaringly exposed in this crisis ,” ranging from food deficits and inadequate access to health and mental health resources to housing instability and inadequate access to educational technology and internet services. The resource-based advantages and disadvantages between students will likely affect the extent to which K-12 students experience learning loss .

The most recently reported findings by NCES in The Nation’s Report Card compared learning in 2020 to 2022. The study indicates decreases in math and reading scores in all student categories, high- and low-performing students alike.

Congressional relief aid for K-12 schools came in the form of the $2 trillion stimulus package (CARES Act) in March 2021, which included $13.2 billion for K-12 schools. Calls for action at the federal level continue, as states and school districts “are not only overstrained but also facing imminent budget cuts caused by the pandemic, with an inability to incur deficit spending.” The federal spending bill passed in March 2022 increased public school spending by $2 billion over 2021 funding levels.

According to the State Policy Network , a significant weakness in the education system is that it is “built for one approach and a single learning style,” causing the pivot to virtual learning all the more difficult for schools, teachers, and students. Emma García, an education economist at the Economic Policy Institute, highlights the limitations of standardized testing , especially in a virtual learning environment. Assessments besides standardized tests tailored towards online learning or representative of various learning styles, such as diagnostic tests, project-based assessments, or capstone projects, can better measure students’ progress.

Finally, schools play essential roles in non-academic areas . The CARES Act touched upon this with over $25 billion for SNAP and child nutrition programs, as well as a key provision that gave school districts greater flexibility in providing meals to students and their families. This provision, which Congress extended through September 2021, allowed schools to use summer rules when distributing food, allowing families to pick up food at community locations. Still, one study reported that just over 60% of families who were supposed to receive free or reduced-price meals during the school year received meal assistance during school closures.

The Economic Policy Institute takes this one step further and recommends “institutions that create education policy and practice must make many changes to ensure that schools teach and reward the development of cognitive and socioemotional skills,” rather than only academic skills. Brookings Institution’s Emiliana Vegas, EdD, argues for “ teaching students transferable skills , including creativity, problem-solving, and analytical thinking.” The March 2022 federal spending bill includes $1.2 billion in grants supporting school safety and student health.

Over the past few decades, increases in educational spending have not led to improved educational outcomes, nor have they closed achievement gaps. Students, teachers, and schools face complicated dilemmas – from food insecurity to the digital divide – all of which were exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. Providing students, parents, and teachers with the necessary resources and flexibility is key to the U.S. education system’s ability to best prepare young people for successful careers beyond school and far into adulthood.

Measure : Find out what your state and district are doing about K-12 education.

• Do you know how your district’s public school ranks ? Are there private or vocational options?
• Are there afterschool programs to engage children, or local organizations dedicated to this?
• Do you know your school district’s budget ? How are teachers compensated while they teach and after retirement?
• Does your state offer tax credit or similar scholarships?

Identify: Who are the influencers in your state, county, or community? Learn about their priorities and consider how to contact them, including elected officials , attorneys general, law enforcement, boards of education, city councils, journalists, media outlets, community organizations, and local businesses.

• Who are the members of the school board in your community? Who is your state’s superintendent of schools ? 
• Who is your school district’s superintendent, and who are the principals?
• What steps have your state’s or community’s elected or appointed officials taken in terms of education?

Reach out: You are a catalyst. Finding a common cause is a great opportunity to develop relationships with people who may be outside of your immediate network. All it takes is a small team of two or three people to set a path for real improvement.

• Find allies in your community or in nearby towns and elsewhere in the state.
• Foster collaborative relationships with community organizations, school boards, or local businesses.

Plan: Set some milestones based on your state’s legislative calendar .

• Don’t hesitate to contact The Policy Circle team, [email protected], for connections to the broader network, advice, and insights on how to build rapport with policymakers and establish yourself as a civic leader.

Execute: Give it your best shot. You can:

• Meet with a family who chooses private or charter schools as an option for educating their children, and ask their views.
• Volunteer at your child’s school to learn how the school runs and how decisions are made.
• Volunteer as a mentor or tutor for an organization or support an after-school program, maybe by sharing your own professional talents such as cooking or gardening.
• Ask to meet with a school board member, or attend school board meetings to ask questions, find out about priorities, and review annual budgets.

Working with others, you may create something great for your community. Here are some tools to learn how to contact your representatives and write an op-ed .

Thought Leaders and Organizations

• Economist Roland Fryer, founder and faculty director of the Education Innovation Laboratory at Harvard University on why he was drawn to education reform and why accidents of birth should not determine our access to a high-quality education:

• Dr. Fryer was also the lead on a research project that determined the five effective habits of charter schools.
• The Education Trust is a nonprofit organization that promotes closing opportunity gaps by expanding excellence and equity in education for students of color and those from low-income families from pre-kindergarten through college.  
• Foundation for Excellence in Education focuses on personalized learning, in addition to choice and accountability.
• The American Federation for Children website compiles data on parent choice programs available across  various states in an easy-to-use map format.

Suggestions for your Next Conversation

Explore the series.

This brief is part of a series of recommended conversations designed for circle's wishing to pursue a specific focus for the year. Each series recommends "5" briefs to provide a year of conversations.

The Community Series

Want to dive deeper on Education: K-12? Consider exploring the following:

Education Savings Accounts

Schools in communities, state briefs.

Want to learn more about how states are dealing with this issue? Read our state-specific briefs below:

Education Reform

• K-12 Education Reform: A New Paradigm

Today, the education reform movement is more important than ever before. The many protests in 2020 on policing methods (Black Lives Matter, etc.) refocused the national conversation on institutional bias and inequity. This in turn has focused a spotlight on K-12 education reform, with an emphasis on equity in education.

This Let’s Go Learn page provides descriptions of a wide variety of education reforms as well as our own interpretation of where the reform movement is today.  In particular, we will identify ways in which today’s digital technology is transforming past reforms with the scalable improvement of educational systems.

As always with education reform movements, educators will continue to question the very bricks of their buildings: the lesson plans they were taught to use, the structure under which they teach, and both traditional and innovative initiatives. It is this questioning, ongoing reflection, and willingness to adopt new technologies that allow teachers and schools to close achievement gaps and accelerate learning for all students.

Reform your school!

Table of contents, historical perspective on education reform, key milestone outcomes of the modern american reform efforts, equity and access in education, resources designed for specific special education needs, issues with ensuring ieps are truly individualized, multi-tiered system of support and response to intervention, standards assessments versus diagnostic assessments, education funding, federal funding, state and local funding, family engagement initiative, professional learning communities, gamification, what causes reform efforts to fail or succeed.

• Additional Resources

US school reform movements, policies, and priorities have zigged and zagged since the common-school movement in the 1830s led the way to education for all children.

The reform efforts of the 1950s were not about standards or assessment; rather, they were about access and social equality. It was during this period that the Civil Rights movement catalyzed modern American education reform as leaders began to tackle the inequity caused by poverty, disability, and segregation of children of color.

In 1954, the first major piece of Civil Rights legislation was passed, granting all students the right to attend public school: the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision. In this case, the Justices found the practice of racial segregation to be unconstitutional. It stands as one of the most important Supreme Court cases of the 20th century.

Color and ethnicity weren’t the only criteria for segregation. Students who were markedly different from the traditional norm were also excluded and treated as less than the whole.  For example, students with disabilities were often removed from classrooms, losing their inherent right to an education.  For this reason, many of the major reform policies of the 1950s to 1970s were about granting access to education to children of color or children with disabilities.

Young students picketing outside the Seward Park High School on the lower East Side during the 1964 New York City School Boycott.

Robert joyce papers, 1952-1973, historical collections and labor archives, special collections library, university libraries, pennsylvania state university..

A timeline of modern reform movements include the following actions:

U.S. Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education , declares the practice of racially segregating public schools unconstitutional.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination in schools based on race, color, or national origin.

Title I of ESEA creates a funding source to assist local schools in educating socioeconomically disadvantaged children.

The Higher Education Act authorizes federal aid for post-­secondary students.

Title IX of the Education Amendments Act prohibits public schools from discriminating based on sex.

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act prohibits discrimination based on disability in public schools.

The Education for All Handicapped Children Act requires public schools to provide a free, appropriate public education to students with disabilities.

Congress establishes the cabinet-level U.S. Department of Education.

President George W. Bush reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), ushering in standards-based testing reforms and sanctions against schools not meeting AYP (adequate yearly progress) goals.

The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act earmarks more than $90 billion for education, including the Race to the Top initiative, aimed at spurring K–12 education reform.

The Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association launch the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

President Obama reauthorizes ESEA as ESSA, with a new focus on assessing student achievement by multiple measures.

Congress reauthorizes the IDEA Act in 2004 and in 2015 amends it through Public Law 114-95, the Every Student Succeeds Act, for equity and the advancement of social-emotional learning.

Often policymakers, school administrators, and parents don’t recognize the distinction between equity and equality.  To reform education and ensure academic achievement for all students, the focus must be on equity.

Equality means giving every person the same resources regardless of need. Equality means giving every student in a grade level the same exact tools and assignments. Unfortunately, this ensures that students performing below grade level will falter and then fail. For example, in a system designed to provide equality, all fifth-grade students might be given a grade 5 math book and a grade 5 math teacher. In this scenario, many students will falter and fail because they have not mastered objectives that are foundational to grade 5 standards. Additionally, students who are performing above grade level might lose interest and their performance might suffer.

Equity means giving every person the resources they need. Equity means giving each student what they need to achieve grade-level success. For example, equity means that before instruction begins, teachers must discover what each student needs to close learning gaps so that they can master grade-level instruction. To achieve equity, individual students might need specially designed programs or experiences. Struggling students must be able to master fundamental concepts: mathematics concepts, scientific concepts, and language and literary concepts. On the other hand, students who have already met grade-level standards need specially designed programs or experiences to continue learning above grade-level standards. The negative impact of using the concept of equality, rather than equity, in our elementary schools, middle schools, and secondary schools can be devastating. In contrast, equity ensures that each student receives a high-quality education and is career-ready or college-ready.

How does equity differ from equality?

Equity vs. equality.

If you give every student in a grade level the same exact tools and assignments, that’s equality, but unfortunately, this ensures that students performing below grade level will falter and then fail.

Equity means giving each student what they need to achieve grade-level success.

Equity also means giving every student access to resources they need to achieve. Access entails discovering what each child needs to succeed. In special education, this is called Child Find: a system or process in place to  locate and evaluate all children with disabilities, regardless of the severity of their disabilities. For students who don’t qualify for special education but who have learning gaps in grade-level outcomes, a process must be in place to find and close gaps.

Today’s reform movement in the Special Education environment is focused on creating tools and programs that benefit students with disabilities rather than retrofitting those designed for general education students.

For far too long, special education departments at the district and building levels have been treated as second-class citizens.  Traditionally, the only systems of paper and digital assessment for special education are those used for general education.  For example, if a district adopts NWEA or STAR to do summative high-level screening and assessment, then educators in the special education department may also get access.

The flaw in this approach is that what is needed by general educators is often very different from what educators in special education need.  For example, educators in special education need highly diagnostic tools that determine a child’s grade-level equivalent in each skill taught across the curriculum. They can then use Specially Designed Instruction that iterates until the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is found. If these educators are only able to use NWEA and STAR, the data they receive will simply reveal whether a grade-level standard has been mastered.

Let’s Go Learn’s system uses diagnostic data with Artificial Intelligence (AI) to assign specially designed instruction (SDI) to address each student’s learning gaps. With a few clicks, teachers can assign our built-in formative tests and assessments to individual students at regular intervals. These assessments ensure not only that students have mastered learning objectives, but that Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) compliance is met. This next-generation system then takes the student assessment data and automatically updates the student learning path in real-time.

When the Education of All Handicapped Children’s Act was passed in 1975 (renamed Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA] in 1990), it required that schools taking federal money provide equal access to education to all children. At its core, this reform required that schools create Individual Education Plans/Programs (IEPs) for each child with disabilities.

The expectation is that each child will have a truly individualized and hand-crafted educational program aligned to their unique deficits and needs.  Although many advocates agreed with the Act’s language and intention, many questioned whether it was truly feasible to individualize the education of millions of students with disabilities nationwide.

Nearly 50 years after IDEA’s initial passage, the jury is still out on whether children with disabilities receive the support, resources, and tools they need. Technology has allowed many advances but does not always improve the status quo and close achievement gaps.  In fact, if not used correctly, technology can cause us to regress.  For example, researchers have found many IEPs labeled with the wrong name. Why is this important? It can mean that practitioners are copying and pasting language from one IEP to the next because they have multiple students, tasks, and requirements to complete. However, this practice violates the premise and principle of individualization. Technology has made it very easy to lift language from one IEP and move it to several others. Ironically, a lack of technology actually forced us to be more individualized.

All this said, however, technology does have the capacity to accelerate special education more than any other single entity or advancement. Let’s Go Learn’s digital system reflects best practices in applying technology to advanced tasks. The system provides highly diagnostic tools with its granular digital diagnostic assessment. Diagnostic reporting is organized to support Individualized Education Program (IEP) requirements: goals, benchmarks, and PLAAFP/present level equivalencies for all subskills. With next-generation tools, teachers can focus on creating the optimal individualized plan rather than on statistical analysis.

Multi-tiered System of Support (MTSS) and Response to Intervention (RTI) serve students’ academic needs. Today we are seeing that many districts and school leaders are concerned about equity or simply implementing RtI or MTSS with fidelity.  They realize that they need better data with a new generation of diagnostics that actually provide useful information. They ask what type of assessment is best. Unfortunately, many educational assessments on the market today may be adaptive or advertised as being diagnostic but are not at the level required to inform instruction for at-risk students.

Assessments that use summative scores, such as single numbers in major areas, and then make comments like “Students are developmentally ready to learn…” or “Students should be able to…” are doing a disservice to schools and districts by attempting to apply this data to individual student pathways. This is technically a faux-pas and arguably ethically wrong as well.

Another simple step administrators are taking is to adopt classroom assessments that teacher review teams find useful for their classrooms.  Fortunately, diagnostic assessment scores can generally be rolled up to provide summative data.  But the converse is not true.  Summative data (such as readability scores, just a fluency rate, or math strand scores) do not inform individual student gaps and intervention prescriptions.

Finally, another way to address this issue is to adopt the special education process.  Does this data determine a student’s present levels of achievement?  Can we as a district administer an online assessment that will adapt up and down across K-8 skills and concepts and find each student’s present level (and thus each student’s zone of proximal development, which is one skill/concept above) easily and accurately?  This is the new gold standard that will ensure equity and break the cycle of institutional bias.  Make no mistake: failure to implement the best assessments to support classroom teachers perpetuates institutional bias, which hurts the neediest populations of students and contributes to disproportionality.

Multi-Tiered System of Support

Each state may have its own version of a multi-tiered system of support, but basically, the systems provide frameworks that focus on national and state standards, differentiated and student-centered learning, and individualized student needs. The general goal is to ensure that academic, behavioral, and social systems are integrated to best support the success of every student.

Response to Intervention

All students must participate in universal screenings to determine academic strengths and gaps. However, if assessment data indicates extra attention is necessary and students fall within RTI Tier 2 and 3 categories, teachers must administer additional one-on-one diagnostic assessments for each student to determine the appropriate services and support. This is no easy task. Additional assessments are time-consuming and can cut into valuable instruction time for students and teachers. Further, many assessments spotlight a need for intervention but cannot provide insight into why a student is struggling or what steps to take next.

With Let’s Go Learn , teachers can provide all students with diagnostic assessments during universal screening. Educators can accurately identify students in need and diagnose any challenges during a single assessment. Across assessment and instructional solutions, the platform provides the diverse classrooms of today with granular data to determine each student’s needs and allows teachers to truly individualize support.

The Let’s Go Learn platform produces narrative reports to describe each student’s strengths and weaknesses, so teachers can address the unique needs of students within Tiers 1, 2, and 3. With actionable data, educators can effectively implement personalized learning via daily automatic flexible grouping, scaffolding for whole-class learning, and personalized intervention. Real-time student reports allow teachers to adjust a student’s learning path, develop IEPs, and communicate progress with key stakeholders.

A powerful process for reaching students who need intensive intervention (Tier 3 in RTI and MTSS) is data-based individualization (DBI). The process begins with diagnostic assessment data from a research-based assessment such as Let’s Go Learn’s DORA and DOMA, which evaluate a content-specific area of concern. The diagnostic data drives the implementation of a validated intervention, such as Let’s Go Learn’s Math Edge or ELA Edge. Frequent progress monitoring with formative assessments that re-align the intervention to current student performance ensures the effectiveness of DBI.

What is the best type of assessment for your educational system? There is a role for standards-based testing and a role for true adaptive diagnostic assessment that finds students’ zones of proximal development. Standards-based testing in the classroom has been the de facto method for K-12 educational testing. In this scenario, state standards set the target for teachers to teach towards and students to work towards.  Administrators use interim assessments–sometimes by the states themselves, sometimes another benchmark test for quarterly evaluation of students.  They get a concrete indicator of where students stand in terms of the ultimate state testing that will happen in the spring, while teachers use the data to guide instruction. A significant drawback of this type of testing, however, is that it can lead to or perpetuate institutional bias that undermines equity.

A significant drawback of standardized testing is that it can lead to or perpetuate institutional bias that undermines equity.

Because students may not be proficient in grade-level standards, using a test focused on those standards may contribute to a vicious cycle of struggling students continuing to struggle until failure is a guarantee. Standardized assessments do not support equity or inform instruction. Teachers do not know where their neediest students’ gaps may lie when testing focuses only on concepts that are within one year of a student’s actual grade level.  Would it make sense to use a French 3 test to evaluate first-year French students?  No, of course not.  Would it nevertheless allow you to gauge how students, in general, are doing?  Yes, it would. The top students would score as proficient or better.  The students who are performing below grade level would be clustered together with low 0% to 25% scores. But there is a big drawback in using this kind of assessment to guide instruction.

The assumption is that because a test can scale students from weakest to strongest, it is a good test.  Because it can measure growth, schools may only use this type of assessment, which has a very negative impact on students with learning gaps. Because we often have systems in place that fail to address these learning gaps, the impact can last forever, particularly for low-income students, students of color, and students with disabilities; these students have traditionally experienced underfunded schools, institutional bias, inadequate assessment and instructional programs, and ineffective teacher preparedness.

Take math, for example; many urban schools have proficiency scores ranging from 20% to 50%.  What does this mean?  Simply put, it means that 15 to 24 students in a 30-student class are below grade-level standards. For middle school, this translates to these students being 1 to 3 years behind grade level. Thus, these students need personalized intervention.

Few people know that state tests are normative.  The cut score for proficiency has been set below grade level; otherwise, we would see proficiency scores that are politically too low in middle school.  So even students who score at the proficient level may be one or more grade levels behind in middle school.  This means the gaps may be even larger in reality.

In general education classes, using benchmark or standards-based testing only works when the majority of students are at grade level, meaning proficiency levels on state tests of 80% or higher.  But we know this does not apply to the majority of classrooms in urban districts.  Teachers need better data.  The term DRIP is used to describe how useless data can be; it means data rich, information poor .

DRIP occurs when teachers have to rely solely on standards-based tests or on the data that district administrators push on them.  They are given data that doesn’t inform their support of students.  You cannot give the same scaffolding to 50% of your students when they are all below grade level.  Yes, teachers can try to differentiate, and some core programs have small group breakouts.  But there is too little time allocated to scaffolding, and the ability of core programs to support personalized learning is generally weak.

IEPs require teachers to identify students’ present levels and use them to set concrete instructional goals. Finding present levels means identifying what students can do at the highest level within a scope and sequence of skills and concepts.  Let’s Go Learn ’s digital diagnostics simplify this very significant act.

Let’s Go Learn’s ADAM math diagnostic assessment

Innovation and reform often rest on the availability of public funds. Knowing funding sources and requirements is critical to many reform efforts, and Let’s Go Learn ’s education experts can help administrators successfully fund reform.

The three major contributors to educational funding are the federal government, state government, and local sources. Schools, in general, receive about 8% from federal dollars (mostly grants); 48% from state dollars (mostly taxes and fees); and 44% from local dollars (mostly property taxes). Charter schools are part of the public school system, but because of state charter law, they often receive less funding; in some states, public charter schools receive 20-60 percent less funding. Private schools, including religious schools, are primarily funded through private school tuition, but while they cannot directly receive federal funding, they can request opt-in services from public schools.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was first passed in 1965 as part of the “War on Poverty.” Its goal was to ensure equity among all US students with grant monies for programs and services that support student learning. In 2015, the Act was renamed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

The Act is the largest federal funding source for low-income and vulnerable children. It comes from the federal government through the states and then to school districts. The states distribute the money to districts using a formula that aligns with the number of students living in poverty.

These districts must demonstrate that the funds are being put to good use through evidence-based solutions that provide transparency and accountability verified by student outcomes. Annual testing has become the tool for measuring whether states and school districts are meeting expectations and closing learning gaps to achieve universal equity. Let’s Go Learn’s databases and reporting systems can mean the difference between receiving grant monies and being turned down for lack of accountability.

Response to COVID-19

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 will provide K-12 schools with approximately $130B to help support learning recovery. Most of these monies will go to LEAs. These can use the funds to counter learning loss among traditionally underserved students and learning loss in general; education technology; summer and afterschool programs; mental health services; and facility repair and public health protocols to decrease COVID transmission. Evidence-based interventions must make up 20% of the money. Of the $130B, $2.7B is provided for IDEA, Parts B and C.

Let’s Go Learn ’s digital solutions are all evidence-based and can be used in supplemental reading and math accountability systems, specially designed instruction, summer school curricula, afterschool remediation, and homeschooling. Our professional development webinars and training can improve the quality of education through teacher preparation and strategies that develop effective teachers.

Low-Income Students: Title I 

Funds are intended for low-income families and locations in order to increase student performance. To receive these funds, recipients must use research-based solutions. For example, a school could use Let’s Go Learn’s math assessment and instructional program to close learning gaps and promote equity among students. Eligibility depends on a school’s ability to ensure that students make adequate yearly progress (AYP). Parental involvement in school-related activities is also required. Let’s Go Learn’s parent reports offer a superior way to communicate student progress to parents and serve as a vehicle for discussing academics with students, teachers, and parents/caregivers. Schools receiving Title I funds must also provide funds to eligible private schools. 

Title III: English Language Acquisition

Funds are intended for students who are English language learners to help them become proficient in English. English learners (ELs) typically speak languages other than English but need instruction in reading, writing, and/or speaking English proficiently in order to participate fully in content classes such as math and science. Let’s Go Learn offers a Spanish EDELL program that allows teachers to compare students’ Spanish skills to their English language reading skills. This program effectively removes vocabulary biases that often lead to a debilitating misdiagnosis of a student’s comprehension abilities.

Individuals with Disabilities Act

The Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) was originally called the Education of Handicapped Children Act, which was passed in 1975. In 1990, its name was changed when people with disabilities challenged many of the social assumptions and social barriers related to citizens with disabilities. In 2015,  an amendment was added to the Act, stating: “Disability is a natural part of the human experience and in no way diminishes the right of individuals to participate in or contribute to society.” Let’s Go Learn offers an evidence-based next-generation special education platform with data-driven, personalized Specially Designed Instruction (SDI) in reading and math for K-12 students. The SDI includes granular diagnostics, IEP-aligned data, and teacher and parent reporting.

For the most part, the states are responsible for educational funding. Most states decide the minimum amount that schools should receive based on a per-student dollar amount (pupil spending). Districts have to assess a percent property tax, and the state uses that figure to determine how much each district must pay to meet the per-student dollar amount. The states make up the difference. For more about how this system impacts districts depending on property taxes and how schools are funded by local taxes, read “How do school funding formulas work? ” 

Bibliography for Funding

• Public School Revenue Sources: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cma.asp
• An Overview of the Funding of Public Schools: https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/an-overview-of-the-funding-of-public-schools
• School Funding: https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/topics/school-funding-and-resources/school-funding/
• Private School Funding: https://factsmgt.com/blog/5-private-school-federal-aid-myths-debunked/
• Charter School Funding: https://www.ncsl.org/research/education/charter-schools-in-the-states-charter-school-fina.aspx

Most public school districts involve families, but often the strength of the program doesn’t help achieve positive student outcomes. In their article Family Involvement in Education , K. Bogenschneider and C. Johnson (2015) offer a succinct summary of the significance of family involvement: “When parents are involved, students get better grades, score higher on standardized tests, have better attendance records, drop out less often, have higher aspirations, and more positive attitudes toward school and homework.”

While the current trend is to use the phrase family engagement in lieu of family involvement , no matter which term is used, research shows that when family members and caregivers partner with schools, children thrive. Let’s Go Learn’s family reports provide clear explanations of student learning gaps and progress. Teachers can add optional home activities to improve progress.

The U.S. Department of Education offers resources for family, community, and media on its Family and Community Engagement page . Through this page, schools and parents can find information about the Family and Community Engagement Team, designed to “expand efforts to help schools, districts and states better engage families in education.” A recent innovation is a very active ParentCamp , which has been designed to “build a connected school ecosystem of caring and supportive adults surrounding our kids.”

Another source of family engagement activities is the page for the National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement. The page offers information on State Family Engagement Frameworks, Effective State Practices, Statewide Family Engagement Centers, State Leaders Networks, and State Policy on Family Engagement: ESSA State Plans. It also provides access to a new report , State of the States: Family, School, and Community Engagement within State Educator Licensure Requirements.

An international organization for family engagement is FAST: Families & Schools Together. On its webpage , schools can search its databases for federal, state, and local funding opportunities.

Professional Learning  Communities (PLCs) are part of a 21st-century reform movement. In 2004, Richard DuFour outlined the key concepts of PLCs to structure the goals nationwide. The five “big ideas” as described in his Educational Leadership article are:

• Focus on Student Learning
• Work Collaboratively
• Focus on Results to Ensure Accountability
• Keep the Concept Alive through Commitment and Persistence

The Glossary of Education Reform’s article on PLCs offers a description of the reform aspects of the communities:

“ Professional learning communities are nearly always an intentional school-improvement strategy designed to reduce professional isolation, foster greater faculty collaboration, and spread the expertise and insights of individual teachers throughout a school.”

The quality of PLC implementation varies greatly depending on how formal or informal the initiative is. In the best of circumstances, PLCs can be great agents of change as teachers buy in and work together.  They give teachers a voice and a means of formally collaborating with colleagues towards clear goals. In the loosest of circumstances, they serve as a district initiative in name only. Let’s Go Learn can provide support for PLCs that are effective and collaborative through online or face-to-face professional development that is customized to district or school needs.

While the term gamification didn’t appear in mainstream vocabulary until the 21st century, video games became a powerful learning tool in the 1980s and 1990s with games such as “Math Blaster” by Davidson & Associates and “The Oregon Trail” by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium. In fact, they became a mainstay as educators and parents witnessed their power to motivate, engage, and build critical and creative thinking or automaticity.

What exactly does gamification involve? Games developed to entertain contain many elements that are perfectly aligned with games developed for education; these types of games offer s erious play . The table that follows illustrates how education can leverage the power of gamification to improve educational outcomes.

Click the icon above to learn more about gamification in math instruction.

To keep students engaged with content, Let’s Go Learn’s instructional learning activities provide interactive, age-appropriate instructional support, including songs, graphics, videos, and gamified concept reviews. Every lesson adopts deliberate research-based pedagogical practices to create intrinsic motivation and reward students frequently via real-time positive reinforcement and feedback.

Reform efforts often fail because educators don’t analyze the big picture before they zero in on particular initiatives to implement. Sometimes a general overarching model is lacking, and the educational plan is a series of outcomes without a pedagogy.  If goals such as “reading by third grade” or “improved family engagement” are not operationalized for administrators, principals, teachers, and students, then success may never be achieved. The educational plan cannot be just a set of high hurdles wherein departments buy or license programs and solutions in a piecemeal fashion.  

The solution for successful reform is to commit to one or two broad goals and then let departments operationalize the actions that are meaningful for them.  Goals then turn into targets or outcomes that move the needle for student achievement and college and career readiness.  

For example, let’s say a district school board’s goals are:

• to expand and improve personalized learning
• to use data effectively to improve student achievement

Then, departmentally, this could happen:

• Assessment departments adopt a better diagnostic test and inform everyone that it is available.  Goals #1 and #2.
• Math departments add a 7th personalized learning period in middle schools; mandatory flexible Fridays added to all K-5 classrooms.  Goal #1.
• Special education integrates the new test into their IEP process, and they research and find a better progress-monitoring tool. Goal #2.
• ELA plans small-group instructional training using the new assessment; they commit to sharing the summary reading reports with parents and students because the new assessment has an easy-to-understand report.  Goals #1 and #2.
• ELD department adopts a new EL vocabulary program but requires all schools to pre-post this new program, as well as any other program being used, for a common way of measuring growth.  Goal #2

By keeping it simple at the top, districts can avoid initiative overload.  In general, districts have way too many initiatives going on, and thus few get achieved.  By reducing the number of goals and making them broader, the chances of making progress on these goals increase.  Additionally, each department has the opportunity to set specific actions that improve consensus and ultimately buy-in. 

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How 20 Years of Education Reform Has Created Greater Inequality

How standardized testing, gentrification, school choice, and economic downturn have widened inequality to create an existential threat to democracy.

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By Michael A. Seelig Jun. 18, 2020

When the latest Program for International Assessment (PISA) results were released in December 2019, many who saw the United States’ ranking continue to stagnate behind its global competitors conceded that the last 20 years and billions of dollars spent on education reform had done essentially nothing . But the rankings don’t tell the whole story. While American students remain roughly the same on aggregate , compared to their international counterparts, the top quarter of American students have been improving their performance on the exam since 2012, even as the bottom 10th percentile lost ground . In other words, something has happened: the achievement gap is widening, a consolidation that is beginning to mimic the increasing consolidation of wealth and opportunity in America.

This statistic is a product of the fact that education policy is not designed to elevate and educate every child. Since the 1990’s, quick and unsustainable schooling reforms have been prioritized that show a disregard for the wider economic realities in America. As schools and parents struggle to make ends meet, billions of dollars have enhanced opportunities for the best students at the cost of opportunities for struggling students. As a result, public education—historically an economic equalizer—has instead helped widen an educational divide that is beginning to mirror the nation’s economic divide.

How We Got It Wrong

Around the turn of the millennium, four major forces converged to shape how the school reform movement would widen inequality: standardized testing, gentrification, school choice, and household economic downturn.

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The first, standardized testing, evolved out of a number of mandates in the wake of 1983’s A Nation at Risk report to increase learning standards and verify they were being met. Standardized testing remains a deeply problematic practice, but good policy that focused on growth and thoughtful administration that enabled greater support could have mitigated the damage. For example, a student that entered 10th grade English reading at the 5th-grade level, could progress—with the help of a talented teacher—three to four years in a single year, but under the existing policy, that teacher would not be rewarded: they would only be deemed ineffective for not getting a child to read at the 10th-grade level. As states pushed mandates to tie proficiency rates to teacher evaluations, many teachers learned to focus on test preparation, above true learning, while the most talented teachers let the market guide them away from schools that needed their abilities most.

The second factor was a renewed interest in urban real estate. As middle-class twenty-somethings, disenchanted with the alienation of the suburbs, began heading to places like Chicago’s Northwest side, Williamsburg in Brooklyn, Northeast Philadelphia, Eastern Washington DC, the Arts District in Los Angeles and similar gentrifying enclaves across the U.S., developers quickly followed. But development needed those free-spirited twenty-somethings to stick around once they became family-focused thirty-somethings, a decision driven by schools. And since city councilmembers, administrators, and mayors were also hungry for the continued development—to increase the real estate tax base and improve budgets—both public and private forces demanded schools get better to keep pace with gentrification. And it had to be quick.

In this context, mayors often bargained with their constituencies to plant roots. Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel, for example, pleaded with middle-class families to not flee to the suburbs by promising better options for their children: “Don’t head for the doors when your kid’s in fifth grade or sixth grade—for the suburbs—because the city of Chicago is going to give you a high-quality life with a high-quality education for your children.” But making this happen required the third force: school choice.

Whereas testing and real estate were more or less natural evolutions of policy and economic cycles, school choice was air-dropped in to bring education up to pace with the market economy. The idea had been around since the 1950s but had been put in a drawer when it was shown to be used to sustain segregation in the wake of the 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision. However, in 1990, it was rebranded in a now-famous book by John Chubb and Terry Moe called Politics, Markets and America’s Schools.

The way it was presented in urban schools was relatively simple: young, predominantly white families moving to these gentrifying neighborhoods had no public option but the neighborhood schools, so—when the existing schools were insufficient—a new school would have to be created that provided a “good” choice, in most cases a charter school or, in fewer cases, a district-operated selective enrollment school. Both relied upon the tactic of pushing out neighborhood children and importing high-scoring, high-ability children from surrounding areas. Since traditional schools were seen as responsible for the existing state of schools, parallel alternatives would need private operators in charge, because of their profitable business track records.

This moment represented a unique shift in city governance. Gentrification was nothing new, but what was shifting was how city governments viewed their purpose: referred to as “third-wave gentrification,” city halls changed their mission from supporting the neediest to supporting development and offering tax breaks and abatements on new construction. As the generation that embraced New Deal and Great Society philosophies was retiring, it was replaced by a new breed of managers bearing a new business-friendly ideology, which naturally forced cities to compete for people, companies, and business. For schools, this typically took the form of a public-private partnership like the Center City Schools Initiative in Philadelphia or the Chicago Commercial Club, which shaped policy around market-driven education that could then be enacted through the city or state governments.

Between the testing requirements that emerged with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the need to improve neighborhood optics for increasing real estate revenues, the sudden need for schools to perform presented a new frontier for the industry. Charter schools had begun springing up through the 1990s in Minnesota, Colorado, California, Massachusetts and Michigan, but after the passage of NCLB they went supersonic. NCES data shows fewer than 2,000 charter schools in the US in the year 2000 but by 2017 that number had grown to over 7,000. And that only counts the ones that had survived: thousands more disrupted school districts and countless lives but shut down due to mismanagement or enrollment problems. The Heritage Foundation, a strong proponent for charter schools, cites an average year-to-year growth of 10-15% nationally during this period, generating the sort of critical mass that moved now-noticeable numbers of children out of the traditional system and leaving it with sizable funding and population gaps that required a serious reorganization of priorities. During this period, charter enrollment grew from around 450,000 students to over three million.

School districts worked to stop the bleeding by reforming neighborhood schools as magnet, testing, or selective enrollment—which guaranteed a high-performing school—but only by displacing students from the neighborhood, who may have viewed that school, problematic as it was, as one of the only stable things in their lives. If “improvement” just meant “skimming the best kids from around town,” public schools could do that too: selective enrollment schools grew from around 1,400 schools in 2000 to nearly 3,200 over the same period, with their student grab growing from 1.2 million to 2.5 million students.

Many charter schools were unquestionably able to post drastically improved test scores and even offer cleaner, modernized facilities compared to the traditional neighborhood schools. And some operators, especially early on, remained true to the original idea of charter schools, one that was originally put forth by the teacher’s union, of all groups, where a limited number of experimental schools could serve as test laboratories with lessened restrictions. But these few were quickly drowned out by the operators who embraced the competitive ethos of the new city governments and saw an opportunity to tap a well of steady government funding with few restrictions and very little oversight. Some were guided by an even greater desire to leverage schools as a weapon in what sociologists describe as the “revanchist” motivations of gentrification, taking revenge on those groups thought to be at fault for the recessions of the 1970s and early 1990s that lost billions in revenue for the owner and donor class. Some, on the more extreme wing of libertarianism, even sought to destroy traditional schools altogether, leaving charters as the only feasible alternative.

School choice at a large scale was predicated on a deeply flawed understanding of how schools behave. School choice doesn’t necessarily drive schools to compete for best practices; it more often drives them to compete for the best kids, the students who are easiest—and cheapest —to teach. Charter operators often deny such practices , but it’s been well documented by both national and local media. By 2013, Washington D.C. charter schools were expelling students at rates 28 times greater than the traditional schools . Chicago charters, in 2014 were found to expel at 12 times the rate of traditional schools . In some instances, incomplete paperwork was sufficient means for expulsion to the traditional school, who, while also requiring all paperwork to be on file, do not have the liberty to remove a student when it is missing. Moreover, the expulsion tactic was usually carefully administered to ensure the school had already received funding for pre-purge counts, while the traditional school would see an increase in enrollment without any additional funding.

Such cherry-picking doesn’t even include the hundreds of stories in local media, from Newark to Los Angeles, about the families that have been kept out altogether through tactical gate-keeping techniques like refusal to participate in the free and reduced lunch program even when eligible, and more popularly, parent contracts that required donations of cash and volunteering that are near impossible for poor families and single parents who work multiple jobs.

The flip-side of these practices meant a disproportionate number of students with disabilities, discipline problems, unstable housing or home life, social-emotional issues, non-English speakers― the unchosen ―would all begin to accumulate in the traditional schools while choice and selective enrollment curated the lowest cost students into their freshly painted classrooms. As a veteran teacher in Flint, Michigan, put it : “We have a school district where all that’s left are damaged kids who are being exposed to other damaged kids, and it’s causing more damage.”

Such competition for the easy to teach happens at all levels. When initiatives like Race To The Top connected test scores to teacher evaluations, English and Math departments fought over AP and Honors classes, as those were the classes in which students would score higher on standardized tests regardless of the teacher’s abilities as a teacher, guaranteeing better marks on their annual evaluations

When schools are asked to compete, the greatest factors impacting outcomes are what happens when children are not at school. As a result, “choice” did not, in fact, incentivize better schooling, but mostly shuffled kids around an already existent bell curve, guided by parents’ abilities to navigate the intentionally complex dual school system.

Temple University researcher Maia Cucchiara concludes that “while the goals of [choice] policy may be ostensibly worthy, one of its consequences is to reinscribe existing status positions and inequalities.”

The fourth factor created a natural limitation to the capacity of choice: household economic downturn. What renders so many education reform efforts futile from the outset—so much so that we avoid talking about it—is the fact that a student’s academic achievement, with few exceptions, is completely tethered to the family’s income and the opportunities it can provide. Many reformers debate the exceptions to the rule and envision reform as merely the scaling of those exceptions. But the exceptions almost always rely on truly unique circumstance: an unexpected source of social capital for a child or a truly rare, once in a lifetime teacher like Jaime Escalante (who still wasn’t successful with every child and utilized tactics that were not scalable, caveats that don’t make for good movies). Just as an inspiring uncle or family friend cannot be recreated at scale in a school, a proficient student cannot be manufactured through coaching alone. Family income creates numerous intangibles that just help a child do better in school. It’s why the SAT performance graph each year continues to show an indisputable correlation between family income and achievement .

During the 1990s and 2000s, despite what the stock market reported, life for the middle class across the nation, and particularly in cities, was not getting better. City governments turned away from supporting the needy, and the economy shifted from manufacturing to a new tech-focused economy that had no place for low-skilled work. NAFTA, the recession and automation are estimated to have lost America nearly 5 million jobs, since the 1990s many of which paid union wages and benefits. Phenomena, such as the jobless recoveries aided owners’ bottom lines but not workers, many of whom found work that paid below a living wage or more recently, in gig work. Meanwhile, average home prices (adjusted for inflation) between 1970 and 2016 have doubled , the cost to raise a child increased 23 percent, and healthcare costs increased 136% - leaving many families without coverage. Wages, however, have stagnated, and the number of two-parent homes decreased by nearly 20 percent, with more than 60 percent of parents citing quality childcare as being very difficult to find and afford. Americans have compensated with household debt, which has exploded to approximately 90 percent of GDP today.

The impact this has had on children is staggering: UNICEF’s 2012 report on Child Well-Being in Developed Countries ranked American children 26th out of 29 countries across the dimensions of education, health and safety, housing, and material well-being. The U.S. is 28th out of 29 in relative poverty rankings, while the country we like to hold as the high watermark for quality education, Finland, is unsurprisingly at number one. American children do rank first for childhood obesity, yet they are among the least likely to eat breakfast. And they are among the most likely children in the world to witness violence or homicide. Research at Johns Hopkins and Washington University has now drawn definitive links between poverty and depression, citing a 37% increase among teens since 2005. Meanwhile, budget cuts to schools have ballooned not just teacher-student ratios, but counselors and nurses as well. In 2017, counselors topped-out at 903:1 in Arizona, while one school nurse in some parts of Michigan was responsible for over 4,000 students at a time when tap water in the region was deemed toxic.

When the reform strategy was predicated on competing for capable kids from stable homes—and these kids were becoming fewer each year—how could the strategy do anything but reshuffle the deck?

It’s important to understand that a school is much more than a building with a bunch of teachers and desks in it. A school is a place where young people forge relationships, establish norms and habits, learn to deal with conflict, identify role models and understand how to interact with adults and people from different cultures and backgrounds. It is these things that build a school community: finding a friend who helps you in science and who you help in English. Finding a group of people who introduce you to new books, movies, music, ideas, and worlds. A school is also the parents who make costumes and sets for the play, volunteer on field trips, chaperone dances, host fundraisers, donate books to the library, speak to the class on career day, and are around when someone else’s parents are not. They let you come to their house after school because they know your house is empty. Sometimes they let you stay for dinner. They look out for you.

Imagine a system where those kids and parents from your neighborhood are all systematically chosen out, to be grouped together somewhere else.

Now imagine being in the school with the kids who were left behind.

Conclusions

The Program for International Assessment (PISA) results show the learning damage that is happening as a result of our approach to education reform over the last 20 years. Reforms have aided the improvement of the best students while creating a deep accumulation of human debt at the bottom, resulting in a reciprocal relationship with the wider gulf of opportunity and income inequality in America.

There are four chief conclusions that need to be understood.

First, choice and the market approach to schooling violates a critical rule of democracy: that you can’t have a market of winners and losers dictated by the capacities of the able and self-interested few in a system designed to serve the collective interests of a nation’s many. Like the healthcare industry, market-based education helps some people get better, but leaves many to die, both literally and figuratively. As long as quality learning is available primarily to those that are the chosen, the growing inequality seen in the PISA will continue to widen.

Second, the current model tethers learning success to middle-class advantages and so the failure of the economy to create wider prosperity makes the failure of the broader education system inevitable with only a small subset able to post gains. Had the free-market fable of prosperity for all actually come to fruition, schools would have an unlimited supply of constantly regenerating strong, healthy students to sustain the system in whatever form it took. Then again, were this the case, education may never have been seen as having a crisis in the first place, which brought the call for reforms. As wealthy social democracies around the world show, once society is funded and provided for, other problems may persist while education is more a process of tinkering around the edges and tuning-up an otherwise effective system.

Third, while politicians spend time and effort fighting free-riders on entitlement programs such as welfare and Medicaid, the irony of recent education reform is that our current education system is the greatest creator of an entire underclass of future free-riders through its ongoing consolidation of opportunity and wealth. This raises a fundamental question about the future of American society: What will happen to the aforementioned unchosen? People across the political spectrum are rarely able to offer an answer beyond “not my problem” or moving these children from place to place in a human shell game before they eventually vanish within the messiness of the system. But if you live in America, it’s very much your problem. In an economy that no longer has a place for low-skilled labor, the uneducated of today become the unemployed and unpurposed of tomorrow. They are the costly outcasts, the prison population that costs taxpayers billions of dollars each year, and the marginalized who are managed by costly forms of social aid, police, fire, medical care, social work, yet still cause violence, crime and overall declining quality of society. As the saying goes, it’s much easier to teach young boys than to repair broken men.

This approach to education is the very definition of an unsustainable practice and emblematic of the types of “solutions” that the government has foisted upon Americans since the 1970s. And it is these very types of approaches to government that make 20- and 30-year-old Americans so frustrated with previous generations of leadership. Their frustration is not unfounded. Government leaders have consistently sacrificed long-term improvement, solving only the optics of problems without addressing the underlying issues, creating even more complex problems that just resurface in a few years’ time for future generations to solve.

Fourth, and most importantly, social impact work often done in the non-specific service of “improving education” has shown that the private innovation space for education has been unable—or perhaps unwilling—to distinguish between moving a social organization forward and moving society forward, an excellent example of the question Kania and Kramer address in their Collective Impact work: Are we who work in this space, despite the success of driving performance indicators in our respective work, aware of the wider collateral damage being created in our wake?

If not, there needs to be a serious dialogue about the way social innovation proceeds, how it measures impact, and what it truly incentivizes to avoid wider systemic destruction. On the other hand, if we are, in fact, aware of the collateral damage, then there are some deep ethical questions to be answered about the way our work could actually be sabotaging democratic institutions to serve individual interests under the guise of social good.

It seems naïve to imagine that in an environment of competition, no one anticipated schools trying to get ahead by only taking the children that helped them and marginalizing those that didn’t. It’s not hard to imagine that as a probable outcome of forcing schools to compete for their livelihood, rewarding the winners and sanctioning the losers, at a time when the core foundations of what helps people find success in a society—jobs, income, social programs, and community programs—were being systematically stripped away.

Nonetheless, this new reality cannot be unseen and it has profound implications for our society, in the present and for the future. Operators in the social innovation space have some important decisions to make. Either, we accept the new structure where unelected, wealthy organizations get to drive the outcomes of a society which, as the last 20 years have shown us, prefers outcomes that are inherently unequal and oftentimes racist and classist, or we have to decide that we want to sustain a flourishing democracy and work to restore its institutions and drive the indicators that demonstrate this wider impact.

What Can We Do?

Educators are always asked what is wrong with education, and there are two completely opposite ways to answer the questions. Everything, it’s a total mess is more commonly heard before the subject is changed. But the second, which takes a lot of energy and explanation actually engages ongoing dialogue: Nothing: it’s working exactly as it was designed.

Education’s current design is the problem and it was not built with an end in mind—or it was built to an end that is unacceptable for purposes of a healthy functioning society.

First, we need to reframe our thinking about schools and understand them in the wider context of promoting equality measurable on broad, national, and global indicators. This means establishing a clear, re-defined purpose for public education and a mission for schools that cannot be manipulated for the gain of individual units at the cost of the wider effort. We must separate our business mind—which requires competition—from our social mind, which requires cooperation.

Second, we need much better measurement of organizational performance that both recognizes the wider geography of schools and communities and accounts for the collateral damage we are leaving in the wake of our efforts. Just like we can’t assess coal production or fracking solely on their abilities to create energy, we too need to better understand what damage is being caused to the social ecosystems we inhabit. We need to use the lever of education to promote greater equality and opportunity as measured by these broader economic and well-being indicators, not those that naturally go up by picking the right kids.

This focus should be the guiding light for social impact ventures in the coming years. We do not yet have the measurement tools and systems to truly understand this, but we do have broad indicators like the UNICEF survey, the PISA results, and a host of other well-being focused metrics. They are helpful but insufficient. Thankfully we have some very smart people in our foundations, universities, think tanks, nonprofits and social services who are hopefully willing to shift their attention to thinking deeply on these problems.

Lastly, we must recognize the existential threat a system that enhances inequality poses to democracy and need to push through the inevitable fatigue that emerges when we see something before us as too big or too ambitious. We must stop saying things like “this is just the current reality” and be bold in our attempt to change the conversation about how we define success. We must be unapologetic about our focus on society even if that means an indicator or metric doesn’t make us look immediately good. We have led the conversation that changes federal and state regulations multiple times in the past and it’s time we lead it again. This must become the new conversation in education. American democracy depends on it.

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A Plan for Evaluating the District of Columbia's Public Schools: From Impressions to Evidence (2011)

Chapter: 2 education reform in the united states.

Education Reform in the United States

The history of efforts to reform education is likely almost as long as the history of schools and teaching, but the last few decades have been characterized by particularly active reform efforts in the United States (see, e.g., Tyack and Cuban, 1995). Dire (if possibly exaggerated) warnings about declining academic achievement in the 1980s (see, e.g., Cremin, 1990) inspired a flowering of research as well as ongoing public dialogue about ways to improve teaching and learning.

Standards-based reform—the establishment of rigorous content and performance standards for what students should know and be able to do and the alignment of curriculum, assessment, and other elements of the system to those standards—has become an organizing principle for most states’ and districts’ efforts to improve, as well as for federal programs and policy, beginning with the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994 (see, e.g., Goertz, 2007; Hamilton, Stecher, and Yuan, 2008; Smith and O’Day, 1991; Zavadsky, 2009). The Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994 was the first to focus on standards-based reform, though that approach probably came to most people’s attention when the 2001 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act was passed. It is central to more recent initiatives, such as the Race to the Top grant initiative.

Standards-based reform is an idea that has caught on more thoroughly than perhaps any other single strategy in the history of U.S. public schools. A combination of research, experience, and intuition about school governance and the prospects for systemic improvement have made it appealing to educators and policy makers alike. They find it compelling because it addresses concerns that a major obstacle to improvement is the frag-

mented nature of school governance and the frayed connections among major school functions—curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development. Standards-based reforms called for a more centralized approach to a school system. Though it can be argued that the absence of centralized authority has given U.S. schools an advantage in capacity to innovate and to respond to the needs of a fast-growing and diverse population (see, e.g., Cremin, 1990; Feuer, 2006), it is also clear that large numbers of students are still not meeting rigorous standards, at least as defined by current national and international benchmarks.

At the core of the standards movement is the focus on holding states, districts, and schools accountable for their students’ achievement—in part by monitoring their performance using assessments aligned with rigorous standards. 1 This kind of accountability entails a commitment that is relatively new in the United States: to hold every student to high standards and to provide every student with the curricula and instruction necessary to meet them. Expectations for young people have evolved significantly over the past 100 years. At the beginning of the 1900s, only about 10 percent of students graduated from high school, yet by the second half of the century the prevalent view was that all students should not only be expected to graduate from high school, but also to aspire to college (see National Research Council, 2001). The pattern of participation in education for the second half of the 20th century was what has led some scholars to label it as “the human capital century” (Goldin and Katz, 2008). It is worth noting that this massive expansion in access began decades before any even vaguely similar expansion was implemented in most European and Asian democracies.

The idea that all students should be held to the same high standards was put to the test as a growing body of achievement data—from both the National Assessment of Educational Progress and state assessments—documented the persistent disparity in academic performance among students with different racial, ethnic, and socieconomic backgrounds. The legal responses to these disparities have ranged from disputes over racial preferences in selection processes and the use of busing to desegregate schools to numerous school finance lawsuits, such as Abbott v. Burke, in which the New Jersey court ruled that the state had failed in its constitutional obligation to provide a “thorough and efficient” education to students in poor, urban school districts. The 1985 ruling led to a requirement that the state implement a variety of reforms to ensure equitable distribution

_______________

1 For more information on Race to the Top, see http://osse.dc.gov/seo/frames.asp?doc=/seo/lib/seo/cos/race_to_the_top/dc_rttt_section_vi_application.pdf [accessed November 2010]. For discussions of content and performance standards and their influence on schools, see, among others, Stecher and Vernez (2010) and Goertz and Duffy (2003).

of educational resources among its districts and schools (Education Law Center, 2010).

Jurisdictions in all parts of the country have struggled to develop ways to truly hold all students to high standards while also meeting a wide range of needs. Students with disabilities, students who are not fluent in English, students who start school without having had high-quality preschool preparation, students who are living in poverty or in struggling families and neighborhoods—all require support if they are to learn to high standards. The NCLB requirement to report disaggregated data on student achievement further solidified the national commitment to understanding and attempting to close the achievement gap, and it has codified into law the pursuit of equity as a high-priority goal of public education.

REFORM IN URBAN DISTRICTS

Urban school districts, which frequently have high concentrations of students at risk for school failure, are at the forefront in the challenge of defining and ensuring equity, and many have also been pioneers in school reform. Persistently low levels of achievement, struggles to recruit and retain both effective teachers and principals and other leaders, and the needs of families in high-poverty neighborhoods are among the challenges that face these districts. Recent attention to seemingly chronic district-level failings has highlighted the importance of considering the advantages of district-level reforms. A focus on this level makes it possible to examine governance structures, central office performance, and districtwide policies and management—all of which make districts “potent sites and sources of educational reform” (Hightower et al., 2002, p. 1).

Studies of district management of resources and personnel, as well as case studies of the culture of school districts, have contributed to understanding of the important role of school districts in reform (see, e.g., Chait, 2009; Elmore, 2004; Loeb and Reininger, 2004; McLaughlin and Talbert, 2006; Moon, 2007; Murnane and Steele, 2007; Rivikin et al., 2005; Spillane, 1998; Steele et al., 2010; Stotko et al., 2007; Wenglinsky, 2000). Districts are also appealing to study because it is at this level that promising reforms can be brought to scale. Though districts are complex—and each has its own characteristics and challenges—they also have the power to implement more comprehensive reforms than are possible at the single-school level. Since the reform movement took hold, districts have also learned from one another, and they have explored a range of approaches to building on the standards-based approach as they work to bring about improvements in even the most challenged schools. The research that has explored the strategies they have used has begun to identify factors that have been effective.

Much of the research on district-level school reform consists of case studies. For example, a study of three districts that worked with the Institute for Learning to implement systemic reforms 2 found that although the districts’ experiences and results varied, they demonstrated the possibilities for using data effectively to solve problems and make other valuable changes (Marsh, 2002; Marsh et al., 2005). 3 However, limited staff, time, and money have constrained the progress these districts could make.

For example, a study of seven urban districts 4 that received grants from the Pew Charitable Trusts to support implementation of standards-based systemic reform concluded that high standards for students, assessments, and accountability by themselves are not sufficient to produce significant improvement (David and Shields, 2001). These elements have to be accompanied by explicit guidance to teachers for implementing an equally ambitious curriculum and by explicit expectations regarding instructional practices.

Another study documented the paths taken by five urban districts 5 that have won the prestigious prize for urban education awarded by the Broad Foundation (Zavadsky, 2009). To select its winners, the Broad Foundation analyzes a range of district data, including student achievement results, graduations rates, and district management and performance data. 6 The study found that the five winners shared a long-term commitment to the reforms they adopted, and that all have “[clear definitions of] what students are to know and be able to do; teachers who feel supported and respected; and students who progress through seamless educational programs” (Zavadsky, 2009, p. xxi).

Another case study examined results for districts that pursued a “data-driven reform model” developed by the Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education (Slavin et al., 2010, p. 4), in which data are used to guide

2 Systemic reform is a term used to describe one of the central aspects of standards-based reform, the idea that all of the components of the public education system (e.g., instruction, assessment, curriculum, professional development) must be thoughtfully planned so that they are integrated and can work together. The term highlights the contrast between a comprehensive, or systemic, approach and efforts to tackle one area of improvement at a time (O’Day and Smith, 1993).

3 For more information on the Institute for Learning, see http://ifl.lrdc.pitt.edu/ifl/ [accessed March 2011].

4 The districts were Christina, Delaware; Community District 2, New York City; Fayette County, Kentucky; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Portland, Oregon; San Diego, California; and Yonkers, New York.

5 The districts were Aldine Independent School District, Texas; Boston, Massachusetts; Garden Grove Unified School District, California; Long Beach Unified School District, California; and Norfolk, Virginia.

6 For more information on the foundation, see http://www.broadfoundation.org/ [accessed March 2011].

districts and schools in improving. The study concluded that the use of data on student learning, students’ demographic characteristics, school processes, and teacher perceptions allowed educators to identify problems and use professional development, and other interventions to solve them. The study also concluded that the collection and interpretation of data were not sufficient to yield improvement—it was necessary for schools and districts to follow up with specific actions designed to meet clearly defined goals.

In short, the literature on district reform suggests that a district can be a strong agent for reform and that districts that have achieved improvements share several attributes, such as those identified by Marsh (2002) and Marsh et al. (2005) 7 :

• a systemwide approach in which policies and practices are aligned;
• strong support and professional development for both teachers and administrators;
• clearly defined expectations for students and teachers, combined with a strong emphasis on improvement; and
• reliance on data to support instructional decisions and for accountability.

Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, and New York City are all examples of districts that have adopted rigorous content and performance standards and have aligned the curricula, instruction, and other aspects of their systems to those standards (Elmore, 2004). They have used data, including comprehensive student information management systems, to guide their decisions and have emphasized professional development for teachers and principals. They have relied on frequent formative assessments. 8 They have also developed a culture of learning and collaboration among teachers. But districts have taken very different routes even to making these sorts of changes—and these differences reflect marked differences in their circumstances.

MAYORAL CONTROL

Changing the way districts are governed, i.e., rethinking basic managerial and political structures, has long been a linchpin of reform. Policy makers have assumed that new structures of authority at the top of the

7 We emphasize that defining success or improvement for an entire district is not a straightforward task, an issue we discuss in Chapters 5-7.

8 Formative assessments are those that are designed primarily to provide immediate feedback to both teachers and students about what has been learned. They can be contrasted with summative assessments, which are usually designed primarily to provide more generalized information about student performance to administrators and policy makers.

system will facilitate the improvements that are needed to raise student achievement. Changes in governance structures alter institutional relationships, establish new lines of authority and accountability, influence the way resources are allocated, and shift patterns of influence over key policy and programmatic decisions (March and Olsen, 1989, 1995; Mazzoni, 1991; Meier, 2004). Such governance reforms focus on authority for decisions about finances, personnel, and curriculum, as well as changes in lines of accountability—who is accountable to whom for school operations and student outcomes. Reformers who have used governance structures as instruments of change believe that institutions can become calcified over time, as those who benefit from them seek to preserve the status quo (see, e.g., Henig and Rich, 2004). Consequently, reform may require that school district governance be “jolted” through new institutional rules and structures.

Mayoral control is one sort of jolt that has been tried in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York City, and now, Washington, DC. Each of these cities has given the mayor increased formal authority over the school system through the power to appoint school board members and, in some cases, the district superintendent or chief executive officer of the school system. In each case, the city has decided that centralized authority will allow district leaders to better coordinate across units; recruit and manage personnel; impose tighter control over finances; and provide more equal learning opportunities for students. These cities have hoped the new structures will also solve problems associated with entrenched interest groups who gain power through school board elections in which relatively few people vote. Reformers believe that the lines of accountability will be clearer because responsibility for the schools’ performance will ultimately rest with one visible official with a broad-based electoral constituency.

Although the exact form that mayoral control has taken has varied considerably, several managerial approaches have been common. In each case, reformers have emphasized the use of data in decision making and have structured accountability systems around measures of school and student performance. The extent to which curricular decisions are centralized or delegated to individual schools varies, but these systems share a focus on the professional competence of the teaching force as a critical element, and they stress the primacy of teachers in their reform strategies. Cities with mayoral control have also sought to mobilize a constituency much wider than those directly employed by or associated with the schools, so a whole community will share a stake in the public schools (Henig and Rich, 2004; Hess, 2008; Viteritti, 2009).

Researchers have begun to examine the effects of mayoral control. Most recently, a study of nine cities that implemented new school governance models was conducted by the Institute on Education Law and Policy, Rutgers University. The study found that these approaches (which

included mayoral control and other models) resulted in greater efficiency and reduced corruption, and they also helped the cities gain significant funding boosts through private philanthropy and federal support (Institute on Education Law and Policy, Rutgers University, 2010). 9 The study also concluded that, while changes in governance may have a positive or neutral effect on student achievement, governance is likely not the most important factor in district change. A study of mayoral control in New York City (Hill, 2011) also noted the importance of distinguishing between a structural change in governance and the leadership approach with which it is implemented. In general, these studies have shown that “structure is not a solution; it is an enabler” (Viteritti, 2009, p. 9; see also Allen and Mintrom, 2010; Carl, 2009; Henig and Rich, 2004). That is, altered political arrangements can bring about important changes, such as new institutional relationships and lines of authority and accountability, and new ways of allocating resources. However, they do not, by themselves, bring about educational improvements.

THE CONTEXT OF REFORM

Ideas about mayoral control, charter schools, vouchers, privatization of instructional services through for-profit firms, and other managerial innovations reflect the continuation of a long-standing American quest to solve a fundamental dilemma: how to reconcile the nation’s democratic ideals, its insistence on high academic standards, and its belief in the virtues of economic efficiency and productivity. Simply stated, Americans have never accepted the notion that high standards for all is, in any sense, an oxymoron. As the preeminent historian of American education observed (Cremin, 1990, p. 43):

[I]f there is a crisis in American schooling it is…the crisis inherent in balancing [a] tremendous variety of demands Americans have made on their schools and colleges—of crafting curricula that take account of the needs of a modern society at the same time that they make provision for the extraordinary diversity of America’s young people.…

In recent years, debates over access, efficiency, and inclusion have become refocused as Americans struggle to understand and cope with an increasingly complex global and domestic environment. Some people ask whether schools will be valued as a public good and their legitimacy measured by their capacity to educate students according to the demands of

9 The cities in the Rutgers study were Baltimore; Boston; Chicago; Cleveland; Detroit; Hartford, Connecticut; New York; Philadelphia; and Washington, DC.

informed and active citizenship. Others ask whether schools reflect a more private definition and serve as training grounds for business, the labor market, and the self-interest instincts of an advanced capitalist system. Inevitably these questions evoke an especially sensitive question relevant to reform in large cities: Can the political organization and control of school systems be decoupled from the processes of urban neighborhood revitalization?

For some observers of and participants in efforts to improve urban schooling, “reform” brings a potentially unacceptable risk—exacerbating the vulnerabilities of black, Hispanic/Latino, and poor students—especially if the reform is accompanied by the gentrification of resource-poor neighborhoods that are home to those students. According to one characterization of this issue, developers use schools as the initial and critical site for boosting urban real estate values. Middle- and upper-income, mostly white, residents relocate to newly upgraded urban centers, and public housing is often abandoned, pushing poor black and Hispanic/Latino residents out of central cities (Fenwick, 2006).

In this scenario, school systems that serve high percentages of black, Hispanic/Latino, and poor students face at least three particular challenges: (1) from the perspective of real estate developers, central city schools are situated near valuable underdeveloped land; (2) from the perspective of the school district, these schools are underperforming and desperately need fiscal resources to address chronic deficiencies; and (3) from the perspective of parents with students in those schools, frustration with the inadequacies of the schools serving their children is at an all time high, and they are desperate for change (Fenwick, 2006; Lipman and Haines, 2007).

There are conflicting views about these issues and the empirical evidence regarding them is thin. However, the existence of the perception that market-driven reforms may impose severe downside risks for some communities is an important element in the complex politics of schools and schooling. It is worth noting that although it has long been argued that local control of public schools empowers parents and community residents, this empowerment has rarely occurred in poor, black and Hispanic/Latino communities (Henig et al., 1999). Some researchers suggest that political insiders sometimes short circuit the intended benefits to schools and communities, and that there is frequently a complicated racial dimension to this scenario (Henig et al., 1999). Systemic reform has not garnered much grassroots support or enthusiasm among lower- and middle-income black parents whose children attend urban schools, who often view reform initiatives as uninformed by their community and disconnected from the best interests of their children (Lipman and Haines, 2007; Vaught, 2009; Weil, 2009). These parents and community members often point to school closings as “proof” that school reform is not in their interests. Again, although

there is no empirical evidence to support this claim, the perception can be strong enough to influence even the best-intentioned reforms. As districts pursue reform, they are eager to know what has worked well in other places—and what accounts for the gains that are observed. Many districts have seen periods of apparent progress followed by periods when improvement seems to stall. Researchers have raised questions about the inferences to be drawn from test scores—the most easily available measures of progress (see Chapter 5 ). And because districts have such broad responsibilities they may make strong progress in one area—say, improving outcomes for English language learners—while other problems, such as dropout rates, remain unsolved.

Reformers operate in an intensely political atmosphere. Their actions are scrutinized by a public that wants results. Tensions and suspicions contribute to community distrust and inertia, more so when reform is perceived as having been externally orchestrated and when its outcomes are perceived to benefit new urban residents and to hurt poor, black, and Hispanic/Latino residents. It would be naïve to expect even the most sophisticated system of research and evaluation to resolve all such political and policy issues (Cartwright, 2007), but it would be even more cynical to assume that good data and solid analysis cannot contribute usefully to improved education for all children.

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The District of Columbia (DC) has struggled for decades to improve its public education system. In 2007 the DC government made a bold change in the way it governs public education with the goal of shaking up the system and bringing new energy to efforts to improve outcomes for students. The Public Education Reform Amendment Act (PERAA) shifted control of the city's public schools from an elected school board to the mayor, developed a new state department of education, created the position of chancellor, and made other significant management changes.

A Plan for Evaluating the District of Columbia's Public Schools offers a framework for evaluating the effects of PERAA on DC's public schools. The book recommends an evaluation program that includes a systematic yearly public reporting of key data as well as in-depth studies of high-priority issues including: quality of teachers, principals, and other personnel; quality of classroom teaching and learning; capacity to serve vulnerable children and youth; promotion of family and community engagement; and quality and equity of operations, management, and facilities. As part of the evaluation program, the Mayor's Office should produce an annual report to the city on the status of the public schools, including an analysis of trends and all the underlying data.

A Plan for Evaluating the District of Columbia's Public Schools suggests that D.C. engage local universities, philanthropic organizations, and other institutions to develop and sustain an infrastructure for ongoing research and evaluation of its public schools. Any effective evaluation program must be independent of school and city leaders and responsive to the needs of all stakeholders. Additionally, its research should meet the highest standards for technical quality.

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“If we want America to lead in the 21st century, nothing is more important than giving everyone the best education possible — from the day they start preschool to the day they start their career.” —President Barack Obama

Knowledge and Skills for the Jobs of the Future

Reform for the Future

The strength of the American economy is inextricably linked to the strength of America’s education system. Now more than ever, the American economy needs a workforce that is skilled, adaptable, creative, and equipped for success in the global marketplace.

America’s ability to compete begins each day, in classrooms across the nation—and President Obama knows we must comprehensively strengthen and reform our education system in order to be successful in a 21st century economy. The case for the link between the strength of American education and the strength of our economy is a simple one—and it is one that all Americans can agree on. Ensuring that every student in our country graduates from high school prepared for college and a successful career is central to rebuilding our economy and securing a brighter economic future for all Americans.

Race to the Top

Race to the Top marks a historic moment in American education. This initiative offers bold incentives to states willing to spur systemic reform to improve teaching and learning in America’s schools. Race to the Top has ushered in significant change in our education system, particularly in raising standards and aligning policies and structures to the goal of college and career readiness. Race to the Top has helped drive states nationwide to pursue higher standards, improve teacher effectiveness, use data effectively in the classroom, and adopt new strategies to help struggling schools.

Learn more about Race to the Top

Redesigning and Reforming No Child Left Behind

As states move forward with education reforms, some provisions of No Child Left Behind—the most current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which is five years overdue for reauthorization—stand in the way of their progress. Although NCLB started a national conversation about student achievement, unintended consequences of NCLB have reinforced the wrong behaviors in attempting to strengthen public education. NCLB has created incentives for states to lower their standards; emphasized punishing failure over rewarding success; focused on absolute scores, rather than recognizing growth and progress; and prescribed a pass-fail, one-size-fits-all series of interventions for schools that miss their goals.

In March of 2010, the Obama Administration sent Congress a Blueprint for Reform of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act , addressing the issues created by No Child Left Behind while pursuing high standards and closing the achievement gap. But because Congress has not acted to reauthorize ESEA, the Administration moved forward in providing states flexibility within the law — as authorized by provisions in the law itself — to pursue comprehensive plans to improve educational outcomes for all students, close achievement gaps, and improve the quality of teaching. To date, 33 states and the District of Columbia have received ESEA flexibility .

Learn more about reforming No Child Left Behind

Fortifying Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM)Education

The President has consistently called for improvements in STEM education to move America’s students to the top of the pack by enabling all students to learn deeply and think critically in science and math; expanding STEM education opportunities for students from all background s; and building partnerships among educators, businesses and community partners to support advances in STEM education . This Administration has promoted several successful STEM initiatives, including prioritizing STEM education in Race to the Top and the Investing in Innovation Fund; improving the coordination of STEM education initiatives between the Department of Education and NSF; and promoting over 100 industry partners in their efforts to boost STEM learning through Change the Equation.

We have focused our STEM agenda further in 2012 to address the following two goals:

• Excellent teachers, with content knowledge, mastery of how to teach that content, and ability to motivate students in STEM subjects and careers; and
• Improving undergraduate STEM teaching, setting a trajectory of producing one million additional STEM degrees over the next decade, as recently recommended by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology..

The President has issued a national challenge to prepare 100,000 effective STEM teachers and has requested $80 million for a competition by the Department of Education to support effective STEM teaching preparation programs.

Also in advancement of this goal, the President has proposed the creation of a new, national Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Master Teacher Corps comprised of some of the nation’s finest educators in STEM subjects. The STEM Master Teacher Corps will begin with 50 exceptional STEM teachers established in 50 sites and will be expanded over 4 years to reach 10,000 Master Teachers. These selected teachers will make a multi-year commitment to the Corps and, in exchange for their expertise, leadership and service, will receive an annual stipend of up to $20,000 on top of their base salary. The Administration will launch this Teacher Corps with the $1 billion from the President’s 2013 budget request currently before Congress.

Girls in STEM: A New Generation of Women in Science

Sparking Innovation 

President Obama believes that education is a cornerstone of creating an American economy built to last. Building a world-class education system and high-quality job training opportunities will equip the American economy to advance business growth, encourage new investment and hiring, spark innovation, and promote continued economic growth and prosperity. Through several critical investments at the K-12 level, the Administration is fostering the type of growth, innovation, and transformation that is needed to improve our schools and achieve better outcomes for high-need students.

Turning Around Failing Schools

Since the beginning of his Administration, the President has dedicated over $4 billion to implement the bold reforms needed to transform the lowest-performing schools in America. Title I School Improvement Grants provide up to $6 million per school over three years to dramatically transform these lowest-performing schools into safe learning environments where students can thrive. The funding has been awarded to school districts in all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Bureau of Indian Education to turn around the lowest-performing schools in each state. More than 1,300 schools across the country are undertaking one of four options for dramatically changing the way they serve students, all requiring schools to institute far-reaching changes to improve student learning. School leaders, teachers, and community members are working together to build schools where teachers and students want to be and want to learn.

Investing in Innovation

The Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund supports research-based programs that help close achievement gaps and improve outcomes for high-need students. The i3 program invests in innovative practices in school districts, nonprofits, and institutions of higher education that are demonstrated to have an impact on improving student achievement, closing achievement gaps, decreasing dropout rates, increasing high school graduation rates, or increasing college enrollment and completion rates. These grants allow educational innovation to expand and develop, working in partnership with the private sector and the philanthropic community to identify and document best practices that can be shared and taken to scale based on demonstrated success. To date, $800 million in funding has been provided to more than 70 grantees to develop, validate, and scale up innovative reforms, with $150 million additional available in the 2012 competition.

Transforming Communities for Learning

The Promise Neighborhoods program takes a comprehensive approach to ensure that children have access to a continuum of educational and community supports. Modeled after the success of the Harlem Children's Zone, the Promise Neighborhoods program supports cradle-to-career services to improve educational outcomes for students in distressed high-poverty neighborhoods. These grants provide critical support for the planning and implementation of comprehensive services ranging from early learning, K-12, to college and career, including programs to improve the health, safety, and stability of neighborhoods, as well as to boost family engagement in student learning and improve access to learning technology. The Promise Neighborhoods program fits into a broader agenda for neighborhood revitalization – a strategy to focus not just on programs and policies, but on people and places – by knitting together all of the possible assets of a neighborhood. To date, the Promise Neighborhoods program has put $40 million into the community to make these initiatives come to life, and in 2012, $60 million is available to support up to 21 grants.

Re-envisioning Career and Technical Education

Effective Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs are aligned with college- and career-readiness standards – as well as the needs of employers, industry, and labor – in order to provide students with curricula that combines integrated academic and technical content, strong employability skills, and work-based learning opportunities that connect learning to real-life career scenarios. Last April, the Administration articulated a vision for strengthening and reforming CTE nationwide through the release of a Blueprint for Transformation of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act . In the Blueprint, the Administration laid out a plan to educate our way to an economy built to last by graduating more of our high school students prepared for college and career through effective CTE programs. These programs equip students with the skills they need to succeed in high-growth, high-wage jobs of the 21st century, and they empower American employers with a skilled, experienced, and sustainable workforce to support economic growth.

Ensuring Opportunity for All

This Administration is committed to taking on the ambitious work of closing the achievement gap and turning around America’s lowest-performing schools, while providing flexibility to states to develop new and innovative policies that will better drive better outcomes in their schools and to prepare their students to achieve the high standards we’ve set out. Secretary Duncan and the President have both called education the civil right issue of our generation. And we know that only by strengthening and expanding educational opportunities for all students — from cradle to career — can we reach the goals that the President has set out for us, and provide a word-class education to all of America’s students.

In February 2011, the Department of Education established the Equity and Excellence Commission — comprised of 27 members from a range of backgrounds including education, law, tax, government, business, and civil rights — that is tasked with examining disparities in meaningful educational opportunities that give rise to the achievement gap and recommending ways in which federal policies could address such disparities. The Commission will release a final report, summarizing findings and recommendations to inform policies aimed at gaps in student learning outcomes and strengthening public education for all students.

Strengthening the Teaching Profession

President Obama knows that teachers matter. The Administration has worked across several initiatives to support teachers, including by recruiting top talent to the profession, increasing accountability of teacher preparation programs, supporting the rethinking of traditional compensation and advancement models, promoting educator collaboration, and re-engaging communities in their schools.

Together with Education Secretary Arne Duncan, President Obama launched The RESPECT Project , which stands for Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence, and Collaborative Teaching, with the goal of working with teachers, school and district leaders, teachers’ associations and unions, and state and national education organizations to spark a dialogue that results in strong policy and a sustainable transformation of the teaching profession. To implement the principles of The RESPECT Project, the Administration is proposing a new $5 billion grant program to support states and districts that commit to pursuing bold reforms at every stage of the teaching profession.

Developing effective evaluation and support systems has been a central part of the Administration’s work to strengthen the teaching profession. Our ESEA reauthorization proposal, ESEA flexibility package, Race to the Top initiative, School Improvement Grant program, and the Teacher Incentive Fund all support the development of strong systems of educator evaluation and support. Once fair, rigorous evaluations for teachers and leaders are in place, they can serve as a foundation for connecting educator performance with differentiated professional development, compensation, and career advancement.

To better support the preparation and development of successful teachers, the Department has also proposed setting aside 25 percent of Title II funds under No Child Left Behind (roughly $600 million) to improve teacher and leader recruitment, preparation, and professional development. The set-aside would support programs that recruit talented candidates into the teaching profession and provide them with rigorous training to prepare them for high-need schools. It would also support programs that recruit and train principals and school leadership teams to turn around the lowest performing schools.

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• Our Mission

What Is Education For?

Read an excerpt from a new book by Sir Ken Robinson and Kate Robinson, which calls for redesigning education for the future.

What is education for? As it happens, people differ sharply on this question. It is what is known as an “essentially contested concept.” Like “democracy” and “justice,” “education” means different things to different people. Various factors can contribute to a person’s understanding of the purpose of education, including their background and circumstances. It is also inflected by how they view related issues such as ethnicity, gender, and social class. Still, not having an agreed-upon definition of education doesn’t mean we can’t discuss it or do anything about it.

We just need to be clear on terms. There are a few terms that are often confused or used interchangeably—“learning,” “education,” “training,” and “school”—but there are important differences between them. Learning is the process of acquiring new skills and understanding. Education is an organized system of learning. Training is a type of education that is focused on learning specific skills. A school is a community of learners: a group that comes together to learn with and from each other. It is vital that we differentiate these terms: children love to learn, they do it naturally; many have a hard time with education, and some have big problems with school.

There are many assumptions of compulsory education. One is that young people need to know, understand, and be able to do certain things that they most likely would not if they were left to their own devices. What these things are and how best to ensure students learn them are complicated and often controversial issues. Another assumption is that compulsory education is a preparation for what will come afterward, like getting a good job or going on to higher education.

So, what does it mean to be educated now? Well, I believe that education should expand our consciousness, capabilities, sensitivities, and cultural understanding. It should enlarge our worldview. As we all live in two worlds—the world within you that exists only because you do, and the world around you—the core purpose of education is to enable students to understand both worlds. In today’s climate, there is also a new and urgent challenge: to provide forms of education that engage young people with the global-economic issues of environmental well-being.

This core purpose of education can be broken down into four basic purposes.

Education should enable young people to engage with the world within them as well as the world around them. In Western cultures, there is a firm distinction between the two worlds, between thinking and feeling, objectivity and subjectivity. This distinction is misguided. There is a deep correlation between our experience of the world around us and how we feel. As we explored in the previous chapters, all individuals have unique strengths and weaknesses, outlooks and personalities. Students do not come in standard physical shapes, nor do their abilities and personalities. They all have their own aptitudes and dispositions and different ways of understanding things. Education is therefore deeply personal. It is about cultivating the minds and hearts of living people. Engaging them as individuals is at the heart of raising achievement.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights emphasizes that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” and that “Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Many of the deepest problems in current systems of education result from losing sight of this basic principle.

Schools should enable students to understand their own cultures and to respect the diversity of others. There are various definitions of culture, but in this context the most appropriate is “the values and forms of behavior that characterize different social groups.” To put it more bluntly, it is “the way we do things around here.” Education is one of the ways that communities pass on their values from one generation to the next. For some, education is a way of preserving a culture against outside influences. For others, it is a way of promoting cultural tolerance. As the world becomes more crowded and connected, it is becoming more complex culturally. Living respectfully with diversity is not just an ethical choice, it is a practical imperative.

There should be three cultural priorities for schools: to help students understand their own cultures, to understand other cultures, and to promote a sense of cultural tolerance and coexistence. The lives of all communities can be hugely enriched by celebrating their own cultures and the practices and traditions of other cultures.

Education should enable students to become economically responsible and independent. This is one of the reasons governments take such a keen interest in education: they know that an educated workforce is essential to creating economic prosperity. Leaders of the Industrial Revolution knew that education was critical to creating the types of workforce they required, too. But the world of work has changed so profoundly since then, and continues to do so at an ever-quickening pace. We know that many of the jobs of previous decades are disappearing and being rapidly replaced by contemporary counterparts. It is almost impossible to predict the direction of advancing technologies, and where they will take us.

How can schools prepare students to navigate this ever-changing economic landscape? They must connect students with their unique talents and interests, dissolve the division between academic and vocational programs, and foster practical partnerships between schools and the world of work, so that young people can experience working environments as part of their education, not simply when it is time for them to enter the labor market.

Education should enable young people to become active and compassionate citizens. We live in densely woven social systems. The benefits we derive from them depend on our working together to sustain them. The empowerment of individuals has to be balanced by practicing the values and responsibilities of collective life, and of democracy in particular. Our freedoms in democratic societies are not automatic. They come from centuries of struggle against tyranny and autocracy and those who foment sectarianism, hatred, and fear. Those struggles are far from over. As John Dewey observed, “Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.”

For a democratic society to function, it depends upon the majority of its people to be active within the democratic process. In many democracies, this is increasingly not the case. Schools should engage students in becoming active, and proactive, democratic participants. An academic civics course will scratch the surface, but to nurture a deeply rooted respect for democracy, it is essential to give young people real-life democratic experiences long before they come of age to vote.

Eight Core Competencies

The conventional curriculum is based on a collection of separate subjects. These are prioritized according to beliefs around the limited understanding of intelligence we discussed in the previous chapter, as well as what is deemed to be important later in life. The idea of “subjects” suggests that each subject, whether mathematics, science, art, or language, stands completely separate from all the other subjects. This is problematic. Mathematics, for example, is not defined only by propositional knowledge; it is a combination of types of knowledge, including concepts, processes, and methods as well as propositional knowledge. This is also true of science, art, and languages, and of all other subjects. It is therefore much more useful to focus on the concept of disciplines rather than subjects.

Disciplines are fluid; they constantly merge and collaborate. In focusing on disciplines rather than subjects we can also explore the concept of interdisciplinary learning. This is a much more holistic approach that mirrors real life more closely—it is rare that activities outside of school are as clearly segregated as conventional curriculums suggest. A journalist writing an article, for example, must be able to call upon skills of conversation, deductive reasoning, literacy, and social sciences. A surgeon must understand the academic concept of the patient’s condition, as well as the practical application of the appropriate procedure. At least, we would certainly hope this is the case should we find ourselves being wheeled into surgery.

The concept of disciplines brings us to a better starting point when planning the curriculum, which is to ask what students should know and be able to do as a result of their education. The four purposes above suggest eight core competencies that, if properly integrated into education, will equip students who leave school to engage in the economic, cultural, social, and personal challenges they will inevitably face in their lives. These competencies are curiosity, creativity, criticism, communication, collaboration, compassion, composure, and citizenship. Rather than be triggered by age, they should be interwoven from the beginning of a student’s educational journey and nurtured throughout.

From Imagine If: Creating a Future for Us All by Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D and Kate Robinson, published by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2022 by the Estate of Sir Kenneth Robinson and Kate Robinson.

• Progress towards quality education was already slower than required before the pandemic, but COVID-19 has had devastating impacts on education, causing learning losses in four out of five of the 104 countries studied.

Without additional measures, an estimated 84 million children and young people will stay out of school by 2030 and approximately 300 million students will lack the basic numeracy and literacy skills necessary for success in life.

In addition to free primary and secondary schooling for all boys and girls by 2030, the aim is to provide equal access to affordable vocational training, eliminate gender and wealth disparities, and achieve universal access to quality higher education.

Education is the key that will allow many other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved. When people are able to get quality education they can break from the cycle of poverty.

Education helps to reduce inequalities and to reach gender equality. It also empowers people everywhere to live more healthy and sustainable lives. Education is also crucial to fostering tolerance between people and contributes to more peaceful societies.

• To deliver on Goal 4, education financing must become a national investment priority. Furthermore, measures such as making education free and compulsory, increasing the number of teachers, improving basic school infrastructure and embracing digital transformation are essential.

What progress have we made so far?

While progress has been made towards the 2030 education targets set by the United Nations, continued efforts are required to address persistent challenges and ensure that quality education is accessible to all, leaving no one behind.

Between 2015 and 2021, there was an increase in worldwide primary school completion, lower secondary completion, and upper secondary completion. Nevertheless, the progress made during this period was notably slower compared to the 15 years prior.

What challenges remain?

According to national education targets, the percentage of students attaining basic reading skills by the end of primary school is projected to rise from 51 per cent in 2015 to 67 per cent by 2030. However, an estimated 300 million children and young people will still lack basic numeracy and literacy skills by 2030.

Economic constraints, coupled with issues of learning outcomes and dropout rates, persist in marginalized areas, underscoring the need for continued global commitment to ensuring inclusive and equitable education for all. Low levels of information and communications technology (ICT) skills are also a major barrier to achieving universal and meaningful connectivity.

Where are people struggling the most to have access to education?

Sub-Saharan Africa faces the biggest challenges in providing schools with basic resources. The situation is extreme at the primary and lower secondary levels, where less than one-half of schools in sub-Saharan Africa have access to drinking water, electricity, computers and the Internet.

Inequalities will also worsen unless the digital divide – the gap between under-connected and highly digitalized countries – is not addressed .

Are there groups that have more difficult access to education?

Yes, women and girls are one of these groups. About 40 per cent of countries have not achieved gender parity in primary education. These disadvantages in education also translate into lack of access to skills and limited opportunities in the labour market for young women.

What can we do?  

Ask our governments to place education as a priority in both policy and practice. Lobby our governments to make firm commitments to provide free primary school education to all, including vulnerable or marginalized groups.

Facts and figures

Goal 4 targets.

• Without additional measures, only one in six countries will achieve the universal secondary school completion target by 2030, an estimated 84 million children and young people will still be out of school, and approximately 300 million students will lack the basic numeracy and literacy skills necessary for success in life.
• To achieve national Goal 4 benchmarks, which are reduced in ambition compared with the original Goal 4 targets, 79 low- and lower-middle- income countries still face an average annual financing gap of $97 billion.

Source: The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2023

4.1  By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and Goal-4 effective learning outcomes

4.2  By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and preprimary education so that they are ready for primary education

4.3  By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university

4.4  By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship

4.5  By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations

4.6  By 2030, ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy

4.7  By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development

4.A  Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, nonviolent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all

4.B  By 2020, substantially expand globally the number of scholarships available to developing countries, in particular least developed countries, small island developing States and African countries, for enrolment in higher education, including vocational training and information and communications technology, technical, engineering and scientific programmes, in developed countries and other developing countries

4.C  By 2030, substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers, including through international cooperation for teacher training in developing countries, especially least developed countries and small island developing states

UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

UN Children’s Fund

UN Development Programme

Global Education First Initiative

UN Population Fund: Comprehensive sexuality education

UN Office of the Secretary General’s Envoy on Youth

Fast Facts: Quality Education

Infographic: Quality Education

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George Bush

Address to the nation on the national education strategy.

Thank you all for joining us here in the White House today. Let me thank the Speaker for being with us, and the majority leader; other distinguished Members, committee heads and ranking members, and very important education committees here with us today. I want to salute the Governors, the educators, the business and the labor leaders, and especially want to single out the National Teachers of the Year. I believe we have 10 of the previous 11 Teachers of the Year with us here today, and that's most appropriate and most fitting.

But together, all of us, we will underscore the importance of a challenge destined to define the America that we'll know in the next century.

For those of you close to my age, the 21st century has always been a kind of shorthand for the distant future -- the place we put our most far-off hopes and dreams. And today, that 21st century is racing towards us -- and anyone who wonders what the century will look like can find the answer in America's classrooms.

Nothing better defines what we are and what we will become than the education of our children. To quote the landmark case Brown versus Board of Education, "It is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education."

Education has always meant opportunity. Today, education determines not just which students will succeed but also which nations will thrive in a world united in pursuit of freedom in enterprise. Think about the changes transforming our world: the collapse of communism and the cold war, the advent and acceleration of the Information Age. Down through history, we've defined resources as soil and stones, land and the riches buried beneath. No more. Our greatest national resource lies within ourselves: our intelligence, ingenuity, the capacity of the human mind.

Nations that nurture ideas will move forward in years to come. Nations that stick to stale old notions and ideologies will falter and fail. So I'm here today to say America will move forward. The time for all the reports and rankings, for all the studies and the surveys about what's wrong in our schools is past. If we want to keep America competitive in the coming century, we must stop convening panels to report on ourselves. We must stop convening panels that report the obvious. And we must accept responsibility for educating everyone among us, regardless of background or disability.

If we want America to remain a leader, a force for good in the world, we must lead the way in educational innovation. And if we want to combat crime and drug abuse, if we want to create hope and opportunity in the bleak corners of this country where there is now nothing but defeat and despair, we must dispel the darkness with the enlightenment that a sound and well-rounded education provides.

Think about every problem, every challenge we face. The solution to each starts with education. For the sake of the future of our children, and of the Nation's, we must transform America's schools. The days of the status quo are over.

Across this country, people have started to transform the American school. They know that the time for talk is over. Their slogan is: Don't dither, just do it. Let's push the reform effort forward. Use each experiment, each advance to build for the next American century -- new schools for a new world.

As a first step in this strategy, we must challenge not only the methods and the means that we've used in the past but also the yardsticks that we've used to measure our progress. Let's stop trying to measure progress in terms of money spent. We spend 33 percent more per pupil in 1991 than we did in 1981 -- 33 percent more in real, constant dollars. And I don't think there's a person anywhere, anywhere in the country, who would say that we've seen a 33-percent improvement in our schools' performance.

Dollar bills don't educate students. Education depends on committed communities, determined to be places where learning will flourish; committed teachers, free from the noneducational burdens; committed parents, determined to support excellence; committed students, excited about school and learning. To those who want to see real improvement in American education, I say: There will be no renaissance without revolution.

We who would be revolutionaries must accept responsibilities for our schools. For too long, we've adopted a no-fault approach to education. Someone else is always to blame. And while we point fingers out there, trying to assign blame, the students suffer. There's no place for a no-fault attitude in our schools. It's time we held our schools -- and ourselves -- accountable for results.

Until now, we've treated education like a manufacturing process, assuming that if the gauges seemed right -- if we had good pay scales, the right pupil-teacher ratios -- good students would just pop out of our schools. It's time to turn things around -- to focus on students, to set standards for our schools and let teachers and principals figure out how best to meet them.

We've made a good beginning by setting the Nation's sights on six ambitious national education goals -- and setting for our target the year 2000. Our goals have been forged in partnership with the Nation's Governors, several of whom are with us here today in the East Room. And those who have taken a leadership are well-known to everyone in this room. And for those who need a refresher course -- there may be a quiz later on -- let me list those goals right now.

By 2000, we've got to, first, ensure that every child starts school ready to learn; second one, raise the high school graduation rate to 90 percent; the third one, ensure that each American student leaving the 4th, 8th, and 12th grades can demonstrate competence in core subjects; four, make our students first in the world in math and science achievements; fifth, ensure that every American adult is literate and has the skills necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship; and sixth, liberate every American school from drugs and violence so that schools encourage learning.

Our strategy to meet these noble national goals is founded in common sense and common values. It's ambitious and yet, with hard work, it's within our reach. And I can outline our strategy in one paragraph, and here it is: For today's students, we must make existing schools better and more accountable. For tomorrow's students, the next generation, we must create a new generation of American schools. For all of us, for the adults who think our school days are over, we've got to become a nation of students -- recognize learning is a lifelong process. Finally, outside our schools we must cultivate communities where learning can happen. That's our strategy.

People who want Washington to solve our educational problems are missing the point. We can lend appropriate help through such programs as Head Start. But what happens here in Washington won't matter half as much as what happens in each school, each local community, and yes, in each home. Still, the Federal Government will serve as a catalyst for change in several important ways.

Working closely with the Governors, we will define new world-class standards for schools, teachers, and students in the five core subjects: math and science, English, history and geography. We will develop voluntary -- let me repeat it -- we will develop voluntary national tests for 4th, 8th, and 12th graders in the five core subjects. These American Achievement Tests will tell parents and educators, politicians, and employers just how well our schools are doing. I'm determined to have the first of these tests for fourth graders in place by the time that school starts in September of 1993. And for high school seniors, let's add another incentive -- a distinction sure to attract attention of colleges and companies in every community across the country -- a Presidential Citation to students who excel on the 12th-grade test.

We can encourage educational excellence by encouraging parental choice. The concept of choice draws its fundamental strength from the principle at the very heart of the democratic idea. Every adult American has the right to vote, the right to decide where to work, where to live. It's time parents were free to choose the schools that their children attend. This approach will create the competitive climate that stimulates excellence in our private and parochial schools as well.

But the centerpiece of our national education strategy is not a program, it's not a test. It's a new challenge: To reinvent American education -- to design new American schools for the year 2000 and beyond. The idea is simple but powerful: Put America's special genius for invention to work for America's schools. I will challenge communities to become what we will call America 2000 communities. Governors will honor communities with this designation if the communities embrace the national education goals, create local strategies for reaching these goals, devise report cards for measuring progress, and agree to encourage and support one of the new generation of America's schools.

We must also foster educational innovation. I'm delighted to announce today that America's business leaders, under the chairmanship of Paul O'Neill, will create the New American Schools Development Corporation, a private sector research and development fund of at least $150 million to generate innovation in education.

This fund offers an open-end challenge to the dreamers and the doers eager to reinvent, eager to reinvigorate our schools. With the results of this R&D in hand, I will urge Congress to provide $1 million in startup funds for each of the 535 New American Schools -- at least one in every congressional district -- and have them up and running by 1996.

The New American Schools must be more than rooms full of children seated at computers. If we mean to prepare our children for life, classrooms also must cultivate values and good character -- give real meaning to right and wrong.

We ask only two things of these architects of our New American Schools: that their students meet the new national standards for the five core subjects, and that outside of the costs of the initial research and development, the schools operate on a budget comparable to conventional schools. The architects of the New American Schools should break the mold. Build for the next century. Reinvent -- literally start from scratch and reinvent the American school. No question should be off limits, no answers automatically assumed. We're not after one single solution for every school. We're interested in finding every way to make schools better.

There's a special place in inventing the New American School for the corporate community, for business and labor. And I invite you to work with us not simply to transform our schools but to transform every American adult into a student.

Fortunately, we have a secret weapon in America's system of colleges and universities -- the finest in the entire world. The corporate community can take the lead by creating a voluntary private system of world-class standards for the workplace. Employers should set up skill centers where workers can seek advice and learn new skills. But most importantly, every company and every labor union must bring the worker into the classroom and bring the classroom into the workplace.

We'll encourage every Federal agency to do the same. And to prove no one's ever too old to learn, Lamar, with his indefatigable determination and leadership, has convinced me to become a student again myself. Starting next week, I'll begin studying. And I want to know how to operate a computer. [Laughter] Very candidly -- I don't expect this new tutorial to teach me how to set the clock on the VCR or anything complicated. [Laughter] But I want to be computer literate, and I'm not. There's a lot of kids, thank God, that are. And I want to learn, and I will.

The workplace isn't the only place we must improve opportunities for education. Across this nation, we must cultivate communities where children can learn -- communities where the school is more than a refuge, more than a solitary island of calm amid chaos. Where the school is the living center of a community where people care -- people care for each other and their futures -- not just in the school but in the neighborhood, not just in the classroom but in the home.

Our challenge amounts to nothing less than a revolution in American education -- a battle for our future. And now, I ask all Americans to be Points of Light in the crusade that counts the most: the crusade to prepare our children and ourselves for the exciting future that looms ahead.

What I've spoken about this afternoon are the broad strokes of this national education strategy: accountable schools for today, a new generation of schools for tomorrow, a nation of students committed to a lifetime of learning, and communities where all our children can learn.

There are four people here today who symbolize each element of this strategy and point the way forward for our reforms. Esteban Pagan -- Steve -- an award-winning eighth-grade student in science and history at East Harlem Tech, a choice school. Steve? Right here, I think. Stand up, now.

Mike Hopkins, lead teacher in the Saturn School in St. Paul, Minnesota, where teachers have already helped reinvent the American school. Mike, where are you? Right here, sir. Thank you.

David Kelley, a high-tech troubleshooter at the Michelin Tire plant in Greenville, South Carolina. David has spent the equivalent of 1 full year of his 4 years at Michelin back at his college expanding his skills. David? There he is.

Finally, Michelle Moore, of Missouri, a single mother active in Missouri's Parents as Teachers program. She wants her year-old son, Alston, to arrive for his first day of school ready to learn. Michelle?

So, to sum it up, for these four people and for all the others like them, the revolution in American education has already begun. Now I ask all Americans to be Points of Light in the crusade that counts the most: the crusade to prepare our children and ourselves for the exciting future that looms ahead. At any moment in every mind, the miracle of learning beckons us all. Between now and the year 2000, there is not one moment or one miracle to waste.

Thank you all. Thank you for your interest, for your dedication. And may God bless the United States of America. Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 2 p.m. in the East Room at the White House. In his remarks, he referred to Thomas S. Foley, Speaker of the House of Representatives; Richard A. Gephardt, House majority leader; Paul H. O'Neill, chairman and chief executive officer of the Aluminum Co. of America and Chairman of the President's Education Policy Advisory Committee; and Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander.

George Bush, Address to the Nation on the National Education Strategy Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/266128

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The Ghana Education Reform Agenda

The Government of Ghana initiated some key education reforms to transform teaching and learning and improve educational outcomes under the Education Strategic Plan (ESP 2018-2030) which was approved by cabinet in November 2018. These reforms are expected to contribute to the goals of the ESP and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 4) and lead to the improvement of learning outcomes, especially at the pre-tertiary levels. The three main priorities of the education reforms are: Improved learning outcomes, enhanced accountability and equity at all levels of the education sector.

The main objective for embarking on these key reforms is to make our educational system relevant to changing national development priorities and renewed goals and aspirations.  It is also to ensure that our educational system adjusts to context and time; as well as advancement in technologies, industry, creativity and knowledge economy. These new reform initiatives exist to provide clear performance standards to guide teaching, learning, assessment and grading of students. The reforms will professionalize teaching and ensure standards. 

The Ministry of Education is coordinating the implementation of these reform initiatives through the National Education Reform Secretariat to ensure alignment and coordination of reforms within the framework of the Education Strategic Plan. The secretariat is also to ensure accountability for each reform owner, build capacity of reform owners and identify and resolve blockages, obstacles and bottlenecks to the implementation of the reforms.

Empowering The Next Generation

National Council for Curriculum and Assessment

National Teaching Council

The 12 key Education Reform areas are:

Policy on Teacher Education Reforms led by the NCTE through T-TEL

  Leads to the conversion of the Colleges of Education into University Colleges and the rollout of a new Bachelor of Education teacher education curriculum to improve the quality of new teachers for the basic education sector.

Pre-Tertiary Curriculum Reform through NaCCA Leads to the design and implementation of a new pre-tertiary education curriculum with Standards and Assessment frameworks.

Legal, Institutional and Regulatory Reforms Leads to the creation of a new agency that combines the functions of the National Accreditation Board (NAB) and the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE). Tertiary Education Reform Leads to the conversion of the National Film and Television Institute (NAFTI) and the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ) into one University; and the consolidation of the Kumasi Campus of the University of Education Winneba and a few existing COEs into a Technical Teacher Training University, in addition to other governance and regulatory reforms. Technical, Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Reforms Realignment of all Technical and Vocational Institutions (TVIs) to be under MOE and creates a Technical and Vocational Education Service (TVES) to govern them. Operationalization of Pre-Tertiary Teacher Professional and Management Development Framework through NTC Leads to the establishment of a teacher licensing and registration system in Ghana, and a framework for teacher career progression based on the acquisition of skills and competencies.

Introduction of a new school supervision and inspection system through NIB Leads to the establishment of a new inspection framework, inspection tools and revised inspection protocols, in partnership with Education Development and OFSTED. Basic Education Decentralisation Reform Leads to the devolution of Basic Education to District Assemblies, impacting the functions of the GES, NTC, NaCCA and NIB. Ghana Partnership School Leads to MOE and GES partnering with non-state actors to manage and deliver effective education service in public senior high schools.

GES Institutional and Human Resource Reform Leads to the streamlining of GES’s operations to increase efficiency and reduce the redundancies resulting from Basic Education decentralisation, and a comprehensive reform of HR systems.

ICT in Education Reforms Seeks to develop early desire and competences in children to use ICT, equip pre-tertiary learners with ICT skills, infuse ICTs into education management, and transform teacher development and tertiary education through technology-based training. Secondary Education Reform (4 Pillars) With the Free SHS Programme, MOE seeks to absorb all fees paid at the senior high school level, and additionally to expand physical infrastructure, improve quality, and promote skill development and equity.

These reforms are aligned to the Education Strategic Plan (2018-2030), and are designed to strengthen the sector institutions to overcome their capacity gaps, and accomplish the goals outlined in the Education Sector Plan. The end goals of these reforms are “ to deliver quality education service at all levels that will equip learners in educational institutions with the skills, competencies and awareness that would make them functional citizens who can contribute to the attainment of the national development goals.” 

The Ministry of Education intends to deliver these reform initiatives through a coordinated approach and is expected to create linkages and co-dependencies between the different sub-sectors for the successful implementation of the ESP.  The National Education Reform Secretariat (NERS) was therefore set up and charged with the mandate to ensure that these reforms are not just delivered at a national level (through the production of a curriculum or legal and policy documents) but that they are effectively implemented throughout the system so that they have a positive impact on learning outcomes in schools.

• Reform Agenda
• 12 Key Reforms
• Establishment
• Reform Secretariat

Delivery Approach

• Delivery Approach Routines
• Communication Support
• Technical Assistance(TA) Gaps
• Accounting to the Ministers

Establishment/Functions of Reform Secretariat

Coordination: Alignment and coordination of reforms within the Framework of the ESP to ensure synergies and linkages

Accountability: Clear ownership and accountability for each reform through a named reform owner working with RS (Performance Reporting through Performance Management Framework)

Capacity Building: Each Reform Owner (RO) is able to access to capacity development and advice facilitated by the Reform Secretariat to support implementation

Problem-Solving: Identification and resolution of bottlenecks, obstacles to implement priority reforms and learning outcomes

Reform Secretariat Funding

Grant agreement signed between GoG and DFID in the sum of £2,682,700.00 to support Education Beyond Aid (EBA)-Ghana as follows:

Complementary Basic Education- £1,100,00.00

Reform Secretariat-£1,582,700.00

Secretariat Inaugurated in Dec 2018

Governance Structure

1.reform steering committee (rsc), reform steering committee (rsc).

• Chaired by the Minister of Education
• Provides the highest level of accountability to drive reforms
• Meets quarterly to review progress against each of initiatives
• Committee will receive and discuss reports
• Reform Coordinator is the secretary and provides progress reports and analysis

2. National Education Reform Secretariat (NERS)

National education reform secretariat (ners).

• Led by National Reform Coordinator
• NERS reports directly to the Minister of Education
• Responsible for organizing RSC meetings
• NERS ensure that ROs develop roadmaps, with SMART KPIs, milestones, clear activities and targets

3. Reform Technical Working Group (TWG)

Reform technical working group (twg).

• TWG is composed of all Reform Owners and agencies
• Coordinated and Chaired by National Reform Coordinator
• TWG meets monthly to oversee and coordinate all technical activities for each Reform Initiative
• Flags and address areas of concern
• Discuss mitigation measures and plan for action

4. Reform Owners

• Reform Owners are the agencies responsible for the implementation of Reform Initiative
• Develop roadmap on prioritized KPIs
• Implement roadmap
• Work closely with NERS to address implementation gaps
• Collect data to evidence performance
• Receive Technical support from NERS

Prioritization and Resourcing

Prioritize deliverables in the ESP based on resources, time, capacity and relevance:

• Priority Level I:  Minister’s Result Framework
• Priority Level II:  Key Reform Initiatives
• Roadmaps:  2-6 KPIs

Data, Information & Routines

Develop good data and metrics to measure what matters:

• Monitoring plan:  Collect regular and reliable data
• Report Template:  Monthly reporting, Analyse data
• Feedback Mechanism:  Feedback to trigger discussion and inform decision

Analysis of data to mitigate challenges and risks:

Analysis and Understanding of Delivery Issues

• Stakeholders actively engaged in analysing delivery issues and owning outcomes.
• TWG:  Monthly technical working meetings, Quarterly
• Accounting to Minister:  Accounting to Minister Forums
• Collaboration and Harmonization Meetings

Accountability for performance

• Accounting to Minister forum:  Quarterly face-to-face with the Hon. Minister
• Performance Agreement:  Mid and End of year Performance Evaluation
• Learning and improving:  lessons learned and course correct Strike the right balance between planning and delivery, recognizing which areas can achieve rapid results and others where it may take a longer time.

Accounting to the Minister

Further comments and feedback should be sent to:.

Email: [email protected] / [email protected]

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What to Know About Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s Newly Elected President

Here are five key insights into Mexico’s new president as people wonder whether she will diverge from Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s policies or focus on cementing his legacy.

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By Natalie Kitroeff

Reporting from Mexico City

Claudia Sheinbaum’s list of accolades is long: She has a Ph.D in energy engineering, participated in a United Nations panel of climate scientists awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and governed the capital, one of the largest cities in the hemisphere.

On Sunday, she added another achievement to her résumé: becoming the first woman elected president of Mexico.

Ms. Sheinbaum, 61, captured at least 58 percent of the vote in a landmark election on Sunday that featured two women competing for the nation’s highest office — a groundbreaking contest in a country long known for a culture of machismo and rampant violence against women.

Mexico Election Results: Sheinbaum Wins

See results and maps for Mexico’s 2024 presidential election.

“For the first time in 200 years of the republic, I will become the first female president of Mexico,” she said. “And as I have said on other occasions, I do not arrive alone. We all arrived, with our heroines who gave us our homeland, with our ancestors, our mothers, our daughters and our granddaughters.”

Now that she has clinched the presidency, Ms. Sheinbaum’s next hurdle will be stepping out of the shadow of her predecessor and longtime mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the outgoing president.

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