5/3/05 -- In an increasingly high-tech global economy, where Chinese and Indian universities are graduating nearly six times as many engineers as the United States, our nation’s school leaders must do more to prepare American children for the future.
That was the message that Gerry House, president and CEO of the Center for Student Achievement, shared at the Administrators’ Breakfast at the Annual Conference.
A former superintendent of the Memphis school district, House says the growing outsourcing of jobs to countries like China and India, along with the poor showing of U.S. students in math and science on international test comparisons, make clear that today’s students will face a highly competitive economic environment.
Students will not be as successful if their schools are relying on rote learning, teacher-drilled instruction, and an undemanding curriculum, she says.
“Our children’s competitors are not the schools in other districts or states,” House says. “They are the technologically literate people in Thailand, Belgium, South Korea, and in every other developed and developing nation in the world.”
To compete in tomorrow’s economy, today’s students need to be taught to solve complex problems, integrate ideas across disciplines, communicate effectively, and be creative, she says.
Such instruction is not as widespread as it should be, she says. There is an often-overlooked form of “achievement gap” that many local educators need to address -- the gap that exists between students who receive a rigorous, thought-provoking instructional experience and those who are trapped in classrooms where remediation, rote learning, and low expectations are the norm.
All of this should give school leaders a sense of urgency to improve their academic programs, she says. They need to provide a “clear and explicit” vision about what teaching and learning should be occurring in schools and should engage in conversations about this vision with teachers, parents, and the community.
House also talked about her work with the Center for Student Achievement, a nonprofit organization that partners with school districts to “reinvent” high schools and create smaller schools or restructure them as schools-within-a-school.
Smaller learning environments allow teachers and counselors to build stronger relationships with students, she says. That, in turn, means students are less likely to “fall through the cracks” and more likely to receive the personal attention they need to succeed academically.