Click here to return to OFCN's Main Index Page.
--- Friday --- April 12, 1996 --- Vol. 6 --- No. 33 ---
D #### ##### #### ### #### #### ##### ### #### ####
A ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ##
I #### #### #### ## ## #### ## ## ##### #### ## ##
L ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ##
Y ## ## ##### ## ### ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## ####
THE NATIONAL UPDATE ON AMERICA'S EDUCATION REFORM EFFORTS
A service of the National Education Goals Panel
__________ __________
RECONCILED | SPOTLIGHT |
Whew! All accounts for the | |
first year of the federal | THE ADVENT OF |
Direct Student Loan program | BRAINPOWER INDUSTRIES |
have been reconciled, announced | |
U.S. Ed Sec Richard Riley. He | Economist Lester Thurow |
boasted that reconciliation of | warns that unless there is |
a federal student aid program | a "ratcheting up [in] the |
within six months after the end | intensity of the American |
of a fiscal year is | high school" curricula, we |
unprecedented. Students | will not maintain a |
received more than 450,000 | competitive edge with the |
direct loans during academic | rest of the world. (#5) |
year 1994-1995 in more than | |
852,000 disbursements, explains | He describes the emerg- |
a DoEd press release (3/29). | ence of "brainpower" indus- |
According to the release, | tries, where high-level |
college student aid offices | worker skills are demanded. |
"bypass the traditional | |
middlemen, lenders, guaranty | Minnesotans boast that |
agencies and secondary loan | their state's focus on |
markets" under the William Ford | education/training has |
Federal Direct Loan program. | spurred growth in the |
Riley expressed concern that | number of manufacturing |
Congress is on the verge of | jobs. (#3) |
"crippl[ing] direct lending by | |
limiting the number of loans | But some educators, |
that may be issued to college | including faculty at the |
students. "It would be a great | City University of N.Y., |
mistake to place profits ahead | fear the call to overhaul |
of students and their | schools and colleges could |
families," he said. "Direct | lead to a de-emphasis of |
loans should be allowed to | academics in favor of |
compete freely, with no | vocational training. (#4) |
restrictions." |_____________________________|
============== QUOTE OF THE DAY ==============
"We have opted to serve this population an intellectual diet that
barely resembles what past graduates feasted on." -- City
University of New York professors Sandi Cooper and Dean Savage.
(#4)
_______________________________________________________________
| A service of the National Education Goals Panel |
| Published by the Education Policy Network |
| 1255 22nd Street NW; Wash, D.C.; 20037; 202/632-0952 |
| The DRC hereby authorizes further reproduction and |
| distribution with proper acknowledgement. |
| Publisher: Barbara A. Pape |
Staff Writer: Elizabeth Gage |
|_______________________________________________________________|
============== TABLE OF CONTENTS ==============
GOAL THREE: STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AND CITIZENSHIP
SCHOOL-TO-WORK: A community effort. (#1)
STATESIDE
PHONE HOME: Mississippi begs grads to return. (#2)
MINN. MANUFACTURING JOB MARKET: Training pays off. (#3)
HIGHER EDUCATION
ROOTS: Return to your birth mission, CUNY. (#4)
HE SAID, SHE SAID
EDUCATION: America's number one economic priority. (#5)
RESEARCH NOTES
STATE S.A.T RANKINGS: Misleading, charges new study. (#6)
SOTHERN WAGES DISPARITIES: Caused by ed/gender, not race. (#7)
===== GOAL THREE: STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AND CITIZENSHIP =====
*1 SCHOOL-TO-WORK: A COMMUNITY EFFORT
A meeting of north central Conn. education and business
leaders and parents lent support for a regional school-to-career
program (Cockfield, HARTFORD COURANT, 3/5). "We can no longer
wash our hands of the training part of schooling," said Harvey
Irlen, president of Asnuntuck Community-Technical College in
Enfield. "The statistics won't let us do that."
The group included principals, parents, teachers, school
superintendents and business leaders. Several speakers pointed
out that a major problem in American education is that "academics
and vocational training are not woven together," writes the
paper.
However, funding is a stumbling block for the creation of a
school-to-work program, according to the paper. Somers School
Superintendent Paul Gagliarducci recommended that the region pool
its money and resources to advance a school-to-work initiative.
However, Joel Arnold, Somers Elementary School's assistant
principal, a local leader for school-to-work, chides his
colleagues to take action now, reports the paper. "If we sit and
mull around on dollars and cents and turn our back on children,
it will not happen," he said.
===== STATESIDE =====
*2 PHONE HOME: MISSISSIPPI BEGS GRADS TO RETURN
A worker shortage in key areas has left Miss. state
officials scrambling to attract home-grown college graduates back
to their state (AP/ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, 4/4). A Miss.
state task force sent letters asking 12,000 people who earned
degrees in marketing, finance or science from state colleges in
the past 25 years to come home. The letters, signed by Gov Kirk
Fordice, are part of an effort to attract professionals to the
state, making the state more appealing to new businesses, reports
the paper.
According to the paper, nearly 500 people have replied to
the letters sent in Jan. by the State Workforce Development
Council. The council was formed after leaders from government,
industry and education decided that the state's slow growth in
business was due to an untrained labor force, notes the paper.
Legislators responded to this conclusion by enacting the
Workforce and Education Act of 1994, which established the
Skill/Tech program, "a regional system for educating and training
workers to match the needs and demands of Miss. businesses,"
reports the paper.
Dee Martin, who organized the letter-writing campaign, said,
"There are a lot of Miss. school graduates who left the state,
because we didn't have those jobs at the time they graduated. We
want to let them know that those jobs are now available.
*3 MINN. MANUFACTURING JOB MARKET: TRAINING PAYS OFF
While the number of Americans working in manufacturing has
decreased by more than a million over the last 23 years, the
number of manufacturing employees in Minn. has grown from 113,500
in December of 1972 to 426,00 in December of 1995 (Meyers and
Hodges, Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE, 3/25). Economists claim the
state's focus on education and training are responsible for the
increase in manufacturing jobs, reports the paper.
"We have invested in education and it's paid off, said Tom
Stinson, a Min. state economist. "We have a well-educated,
motivated, productive labor force in the manufacturing areas.
People know that about the Minn. worker."
Stinson noted that Minn. faces many cost disadvantages in
the manufacturing field. Taxes are higher than in many other
states, and so are wages, he explained. Minn. also is in a bad
location for distribution of goods from factories to customers
and "nobody stays or moves here for the climate," writes the
paper. Yet, something in the state is "overcoming all those cost
disadvantages ... My candidate is the quality and productivity of
the labor force," said Stinson.
Stinson predicts several challenges facing Minn. in
nurturing manufacturing employment, including: the state must
continually ensure that high school and technical school
graduates are "equipped with the latest level of skills;" and the
state must "modify institutions to adapt to [an] increased need
for adult education."
The paper cites a recent study of manufacturing and service
jobs in Minn. that supports Stinson's claim of the importance of
education. According to the study, a Minn. worker "with one more
year of education than a comparable employee is 3% more likely to
have a 'good job,' paying $20,000 or more," writes the paper.
Dennis Ahlburg, professor of industrial relations and public
policy at the U of Minnesota further explained that a person with
5 years more education than a comparable worker is 15% more
likely to have a job that pays well. "The importance of
education is so clear in the data," said Ahlburg. "That really
needs to get through to the governor and the public policy
leaders who make decisions about the future of education."
However, not all Minnesotans are optimistic. Fred
Zimmerman, a professor of manufacturing systems engineering at
the U of St. Thomas, said, "We've been losing ground in high
value-added manufacturing forgings, computer systems, aircraft
instruments] and picking up manufacturing in burial vaults,
office furniture and greeting cards - industries that don't pay
as much."
Zimmerman also noted that data from a study in the early
1990s indicate that jobs in declining industries paid an average
of $546.50, while wages in expanding industries paid an average
of $381.20. One reason for the shift in wage rates is that many
companies have chosen to invest in overseas manufacturing rather
than in the state. "I sense among Minn. officials a certain
smugness that is perhaps not healthy in the long run," he said.
"This place isn't a disaster, but neither is it insulated from
these world events."
===== HIGHER EDUCATION =====
*4 ROOTS: RETURN TO YOUR BIRTH MISSION, CUNY
Faculty members at the City University of New York (CUNY)
are troubled by the direction Chancellor W. Ann Reynolds is
steering the school, according to Sandi Cooper and Dean Savage,
professors at the College of Staten Island and Queens College,
respectively (N.Y. TIMES, 4/8). They fear that students will be
the losers as Reynolds changes course by "diminishing [CUNY's]
liberal arts orientation and emphasizing vocational
preparedness," they pen.
CUNY is the third largest university system in the country,
serving primarily disadvantaged minorities, particularly women.
According to the editorial, the traditional liberal arts
curriculum is being replaced by vocational programs.
The new direction is particularly evident in newer colleges,
according to the professors. The York College, in Jamaica, had
issued fewer than 10% of its degrees in vocational programs in
1976; however in 1992, 70% of the degrees issued were in
vocational programs. Similar figures plague the College of
Staten Island, the Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn and other
city colleges, they write.
Cooper and Savage lament that "we have opted to serve this
[disadvantaged and minority] population an intellectual diet that
barely resembles what past graduates feasted on." The reason
does not hinge on the political correctness movement, but on 20
years of fiscal crisis that have caused administrations' to "de-
emphasize" liberal arts and promote vocational programs, they
write.
The administration insists that changes in curriculum are
customer driven, report the authors. However, according to a
sociologist's survey of 1,400 Queens College graduates, students
want the ability "to learn new things rapidly," "to write clearly
and effectively" and "to analyze problems."
"Just when the faculty begins to mirror the diversity of the
students, the university begins to talk about electronic
classrooms. Just when the majority of the student body consists
of minority members and women, the commitment made in 1847 - 'to
educate the children of the whole people' - is redefined. CUNY
should return to its roots," the editorial concludes.
==== HE SAID, SHE SAID ====
*5 EDUCATION: AMERICA'S NUMBER ONE ECONOMIC PRIORITY
In order to close America's skills gap with the rest of the
industrialized world and to give the nation a competitive edge,
America must "ratchet up the intensity of the American high
school," writes economist Lester Thurow (WASH POST, 4/7). Thurow
explains that America has been transformed from a natural
resource economy, in which companies such as American Cotton Oil,
American Steel, General Electric and People's Gas dominated, to a
"brainpower industry," in which firms involved in
microelectronics, biotech, material-science industries, civilian
aircraft manufacturing, machine tools and robots and computers
rule.
According to Thurow, a nation that wants to "stay at the
leading edge of technology and continue to generate high wages
and profits" must participate in the "evolutionary progress of
brainpower industries so that it is in a position to take
advantage of the technical and economic revolutions that
occasionally arise." The critical link to this new world is
knowledge, writes Thurow. He cites recent studies that revealed
that rates of return for industries that invest in knowledge and
skill training are more than twice those of industries that focus
instead on plant and equipment.
Thurow: "In the past, First World citizens with Third World
skills could earn premium wages simply because they lived in the
First World. ... But that premium is gone." Today's
multinational corporations can decide where to develop and
maintain technological leadership, which in turn determines where
most of their high level jobs will be located, writes Thurow. He
adds that "the countries that offer companies the lowest costs of
developing technological leadership will be the countries that
invest the most in research and development, education and
infrastructure."
The laborer of today and tomorrow must possess a new and
higher set of skills, notes Thurow. One sign of the times is the
number of factory workers with college diplomas. For example,
factory workers of yesteryear used to be high school graduates or
even dropouts. However, 16% of today's laborers have some
college education and 5% have a college degree, notes Thurow.
Thirty-two percent of precision production and craft workers have
been to or graduated from college. Thurow writes that the
linkage between math abilities and wages has tripled for men and
doubled for women during the last twenty years.
American firms no longer are forced to hire an American high
school graduate "if that graduate is not world-class," reports
Thurow. He adds: "His or her educational defects are not their
problem." Instead, the firm might opt to train a "well-educated
Chinese high school graduate" rather than invest in training an
American high school dropout or poorly trained American high
school graduate.
Thurow warns that "the implications for the future are
simple. If America wants to generate a high standard of living
for all of its citizens, skill an knowledge development are
central." But American must face the challenge of building a new
educational system, beginning with a more rigorous curricula at
the high school level. Thurow briefly discusses America's skills
gap with other nations. He mentions that the noncollege bound in
other countries receive other post-secondary skills training:
Germany's famed apprenticeship program; French policy that
requires all business firms to spend 1% of its sales revenue on
training its workforce; and heavy investment in worker training
by Japanese firms.
Thurow concludes: "Closing this [skills] gap and giving the
country a competitive edge should be America's number one
educational priority."
==== RESEARCH NOTES ====
*6 STATE S.A.T RANKINGS: MISLEADING CHARGES NEW STUDY
The state-by-state ranking of Scholastic Assessment Test
scores published by the College Board has been challenged by a
study that claims the rankings are misleading because they fail
to account for the percentage of students who took the test in
each state (Tabor, N.Y. TIMES, 3/27).
The study entitled "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildering: the
Use and Misuse of State S.A.T. and A.C.T. Scores," was conducted
by Brian Powell of Indiana U and Lala Carr Steelman of the U of
South Carolina. They fault the ranking of states by S.A.T. scores
because some states are unfairly praised for good S.A.T
performance, while others are unfairly reprimanded for poor
performance. The professors also take issue with the rankings
because they often are used to justify cuts in education by
officials who cite states with lower per-pupil spending and
higher S.A.T. scores, reports the paper.
In Ark. only 6% of high school seniors take the test and the
state's average score is 997 out of 1600 points. In contrast,
88% of high school seniors in Conn. take the test, with an
average score of 904. The study notes that the current ranking
is unfair and that "the participation rate (i.e., the number of
high school seniors taking the S.A.T.) accounts for the lion's
share -- over 80% -- of the variance in state scores," reports
the paper. States in which a small percentage of students take
the test tend to have high average S.A.T. scores.
The professors re-ranked the states adjusting for the number
of students taking the test; their ranking was dramatically
different from that of the College Board. For example, Miss. was
ranked 16th by the College Board, but it was the last on the
adjusted ranking. Northeastern states moved up on the adjusted
ranking scale and some Western, Midwestern and Southern states
moved down on the adjusted ranking list, writes the paper.
Conflicting with recent reports and conservative political
rhetoric, the professors argue that student-teacher ratios and
public financing levels actually do help increase test scores.
"You hear claims that cutting education funding will not make
that much of a difference. But our finding is that both S.A.T.
scores and A.C.T. scores, if properly adjusted, are linked
positively to school funding," said Powell.
College Board spokeswoman Janice A. Gams said that the board
consistently warns those who call seeking rankings that the
numbers could be misleading, the paper writes. "It's a constant
struggle. We can't prevent the misuse of the scores. But there
is little we can do other than caution against it."
*7 SOUTHERN WAGE DISPARITIES: CAUSED BY ED & GENDER, NOT RACE
Southern states must overhaul their education systems to
avoid serious wage disparities and face the "challenges of the
21st Century," according to a new report issued by MDC Inc., a
research organization based in Chapel Hill, N.C. (Wilkie, BOSTON
GLOBE, 4/7). The report revealed that gender and education
differences are greater factors than race in causing wage
disparities in the South.
"Race still matters in economic mobility, but it appears to
matter less these days than education, gender and family
structure," writes "The State of the South." The report borrows
from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech by
writing that the South "is approaching a time when the color of
one's skin is less important than the content of one's
education."
The 11 states of the Confederacy plus Ky., W.V. and Okla.
were included in the study, reports the paper. According to the
study, black men now make more than white and black women at
every educational level. In addition, black married couples,
with both partners working currently have annual incomes that are
86% the size of wages earned by similar white couples. According
to the report, this finding suggests that "low educational
attainment and the surge in single-mother families have surpassed
racial discrimination in the workplace as the main reasons for
the white-black gap."
The rise in out-of-wedlock births since 1980 has hampered
black gains, notes the report. For example, in La. and Miss.
unmarried mothers gave birth to 40% of all babies born in 1992.
One of every five babies are born to teen-aged mothers, who are
less likely to be well educated and have high paying jobs. More
than half of Southern black families and 17% of white families
are headed by single women.
The report claims that "these demographic trends and
inadequate education threaten the South's march to prosperity in
an economy that increasingly discriminates against the uneducated
and single-parent families." The "State of the South" concludes
by suggesting states undertake "massive reeducation and
retraining efforts to upgrade the skills of the emerging flood of
older workers."
Click here to return to OFCN's
Academy Program
Click here to return to OFCN's Main Index Page.
John Kurilecjmk@ofcn.org