Anthony Carnevale and Donna Desrochers, Educational Testing ServiceMay 2004
In this new ETS report, Carnevale and Desrochers demonstrate that the push for higher school standards and stronger student achievement is no phony invention perpetrated by educators or politicians but, rather, a profound structural readjustment dictated by changes in the U.S. (and world) economy over the past two decades. (Alan Greenspan has been making the same point in recent speeches and testimony.) In brief: jobs in the modern economy require college-level skills and knowledge, which means that, besides finding ways to make postsecondary education accessible to just about everyone, we need a K-12 system that prepares just about everyone to succeed. We've never needed to do that in the past so we don't have a system designed for that purpose. There are powerful equity considerations, too, as economic changes will cause the gap to continue widening between the incomes and life prospects of low- and high-skilled people. The present education system, however, is not designed to solve this problem and is going to need huge changes in efficiency and effectiveness in order to do so. Though not as concise (at 90 pages) as A Nation at Risk, this valuable report supplies plenty of hard evidence that to continue floating on a tide of mediocrity is to threaten the country's prosperity as well as its security. I cannot fathom why today's standards-based reformers don't rely more on this argument. You can find the report at http://www.ets.org/research/dload/standards_for_what.pdf. And you may want to take another look at the report of the American Diploma Project, which spells out the math and English skills that high school graduates need for successful entry into this new economy. It's at http://www.achieve.org/achieve.nsf/AmericanDiplomaProject?openform.
