Educational Best Practices From High-Achieving Nations (Perspectives in Education)

Now more than ever, high-quality education for all is a public good that is essential for the good of the public. As the fate of individuals and nations is increasingly interdependent, the quest for access to an equitable, empowering education for all people has become a critical issue for the United States as a whole. No society can thrive in a technological, knowledge-based economy by depriving large segments of its population of learning. But at a time when three quarters of the fastest growing occupations require postsecondary education, just over one third of young people in the United States receive a college degree. Meanwhile, in many European and Asian nations, more than half of young people are becoming college graduates. At a time when high school dropouts are unlikely to secure any job at all, the U.S. high school graduation rate—stuck at about 70%—has dropped from first in the world to the bottom half of industrialized nations. At a time when children of color comprise a majority in most U.S. urban districts and will be the majority in the nation as a whole by 2025, we face pernicious achievement gaps that fuel inequality and shortchange not only young people but the entire country.

Recent analyses of data prepared for school equity cases in more than 20 states have found that on every tangible measure—from qualified teachers and reasonable class sizes, to adequate textbooks, computers, facilities, and curriculum offerings—schools serving large numbers of students of color have significantly fewer resources than schools serving more affluent, White students. Many such schools are so severely overcrowded that they run a multitrack schedule with a shortened school day and school year, lack basic textbooks and materials, do not offer the courses students would need to be eligible for college, and are staffed by a parade of untrained, inexperienced, and temporary teachers.

Although many U.S. educators and civil rights advocates have fought for higher quality and more equitable education over many years—in battles for desegregation, school finance reform, and equitable treatment of students within schools—progress has been stymied in many states over the past 2 decades as segregation has worsened and disparities have grown. While students in the highest achieving states and districts in the United States do as well as their peers in high-achieving nations, our continuing comfort with profound inequality is the Achilles' heel of American education. These disparities have come to appear inevitable in the United States; however, they are not the norm in developed nations around the world, which fund their education systems centrally and equally, with additional resources often going to the schools where students' needs are greater. These more equitable investments made by high-achieving nations are also steadier and more focused on critical elements of the system: the quality of teachers and teaching, the development of curriculum and assessments that encourage ambitious learning by both students and teachers, and the design of schools as learning organizations that support continuous reflection and improvement. With the exception of a few states with enlightened long-term leadership, the United States, by contrast, has failed to maintain focused investments in any of these essential elements.

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