Education system needs to be restructured

If you were a shareholder in a corporation that was losing its customer base and running on borrowed money, would you hire a CEO who proposed taking money from the corporation to help start competition?

The justification is that, by generating competition, it would make the corporation better. Such thinking would tell one that the applicant lacks confidence in turning the corporation around and is simply squandering money that doesn't exist. Sound silly?

That is what some political candidates seem to be proposing in solving the problem of public education. They want to divert tax dollars from the "corporation" to set up competition by proposing school choice and tuition tax credits.

Current proposals make minor adjustments to the system without any understanding of what the system is supposed to produce. They should consult with the "customers" (parents, students, taxpayers) instead of the "stakeholders" (professionals and special interest groups). Candidates offer the usual cliches — more accountability, local control and better use of funds. Past governors and legislators have been there, done that, with the same results — the system continues to drift like a rudderless ship.

Lacking in the debate about improving public education is that no one has taken the time to ask some basic questions: What is the core purpose of education, as constitutionally and legislatively mandated? What is the product it is supposed to produce? How will results be measured and how will you know if you are succeeding?

More important, no one has taken the time to say how the problem of educating and preparing students to succeed in the new global economy has changed over the past 30 years. (The Nation at Risk Report did, but no one seemed to care.) In the private sector, if you do not take the time to understand how your environment has changed, how it affects your market, and then restructure to meet the new demands, you will be out of business.

The Internet has changed the world. Our educational system needs redesigning for today's economy. It requires higher skills and continuous upgrading, if we are to compete in the global marketplace. While we once worried about outsourcing skilled jobs, the professional jobs are now going, as well. The rate of development in the technical fields is growing much faster in other countries such as India and China.

Our educational system is a bunch of unrelated sub-systems mired in bureaucratic turf battles. And our legislators, in trying to satisfy another interest group, recently added another bureaucratic layer, the Technical College Board. In the meantime, other nations are surpassing us because they are starting from scratch, while we have to deal with the status quo.