Continuance |
||
|
||
Continuance Fall / Winter 2003-2004The Intercorrectedness of our Educational System Harold Hodgkinson Changes Since 1985 • Increased awareness of the vital importance of the early years of life (preschool) for successful intellectual and social performance in school and college • Use of an assessment system to create educational change, not just to record it • Far greater awareness of state and local political leaders of the realities of the bridging function between the segments • More and better collaboration between teachers, administrators and boards • Establishment of associations between the Chief State School Officer and the State Higher Education Executive Officer • Diversity: Diversity cannot be defined as black and white only, in today's world, yet race is becoming increasingly complex and ambiguous, through immigration and intermarriage. • Technology: So far there is little evidence that computers in the classroom have transformed (or even improved) student learning of the basic skills of reading, writing, and computation. • Poverty: Twenty-one percent of children are still below the poverty line. No major national plan has been developed to reduce this number, since President Johnson's War on Poverty in the 1960s. Trends for the Future • An inevitable push toward content standards for college degrees, as we have seen at the state level for high school diplomas. (National tests or national standards is a key question for K- 12 education, with implications for higher education as well.) • As minorities increase in southwestern and southeastern schools, proportionate increases in minority enrollments in higher education are, and will continue to be, the result. • While the nation's youth will have no majority race by 2025, most of this diversity will be contained in about 200 of our 3,000-plus counties. No kind of diversity is, or will be, evenly spread across the nation--not race, wealth, religion, or age. • New awareness that higher education has miserable data on the basics of student progress, including; dropout rates, especially for minorities; what happens to students after graduation; assessment of quality of teaching; and student grading practices. In addition, there is no satisfactory explanation for why the costs of higher education continue to increase faster than the cost of living. • It is not clear how long standards will continue to dominate the national discourse of education. Equity will remain as a shunned topic, but a good guess might be another decade. By then, we may have a much more homogenized educational system, calibrated from pre-K to 12 and some states to 16, plus some attempt at national subject matter examinations. However, given that the federal government provides less than 10% of education funding, it seems likely that state and local educational leadership will not wither away. The Golden Rule is that "those who provide the gold make the rules," and it applies to all levels of our educational system. It is sad but true that there is no reason to think that youth poverty rates will decline in the next decade, meaning that low income children from families in which the parents are not well educated will be at about the same disadvantage we find today. It is unlikely that computers, per se, will be able to alter this reality, meaning that the talent and contributions of 20% of tomorrow's youth will not be fully available to higher education nor to the nation. Harold Hodgkinson Harold Hodgkinson, Director of the Institute for Educational Leadership‘s Center for Demographic Policy, is widely known as a lecturer and analyst of demographic and educational issues. He has been a fellow of the American Council on Education and President of the National Training Laboratories. He has published 12 books, three of which have won national awards, and over 20 articles. make the rules," and it applies to all levels of our educational system. It is sad but true that there is no reason to think that youth poverty rates will decline in the next decade, meaning that low income children from families in which the parents are not well educated will be at about the same disadvantage we find today. It is unlikely that computers, per se, will be able to alter this reality, meaning that the talent and contributions of 20% of tomorrow's youth will not be fully available to higher education nor to the nation. His research has been sponsored by a wide range of prominent foundations and government agencies at the federal, state, and local levels, His consulting assignments have included over 600 colleges and universities, numerous public and private schools and school systems, state and federal agencies, as well as many corporations. When asked how he became interested in the idea of all education levels working together, he said, "I spent 18 years trying to get education association leadership in Washington, DC to talk to each other. We started a group called the Forum of Education Organization Leaders which is the chiefs of the 12 organizations that can pull the levers to make change." The organizations continue to meet as the Learning First Alliance. |