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In the late 1990s, as state and federal legislators began to recognize the relationship between education, civil rights, and economic justice, they began to transform the policy of equal opportunity in education into the new expectation of academic proficiency for all students. Pressure from state and federal agencies coupled with a growing realization that all children and youth can achieve high academic excellence have fostered this unprecedented change in public education. Starting in Kentucky, Texas, Colorado, and North Carolina, state legislatures began establishing policies about learning standards, achievement proficiency, and consequences for failure. With the enactment of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal legislation in 2002, the United States became the first nation to establish a national goal of all students attaining proficiency in reading, math, and science. This elevation of education from something available to only a few to a civil right that is absolutely essential has been fueled by two powerful and relatively new forces: changes in the economic marketplace and the emerging science of teaching and learning.
The Changing Economic Marketplace
The first development driving the new American revolution has been the changing economic marketplace. The economic marketplace has changed in four significant ways:
1. The world of work has given way to the “age of the mind.”
2. There is an ever-growing demand for new skills.
3. New technology continues to develop.
4. The relationship between education and income is becoming increasingly significant.
From the World of Work to the Age of the Mind
In today’s world, there is only one door of opportunity to the good life: education. The old concept of hard work and perseverance has been transformed by the technological revolution. The world of work is transforming into the “age of the mind.” Jobs that previously employed millions of upwardly mobile but largely uneducated men and women in the United States have all but disappeared. Industrial robots and other forms of technology have replaced many of these laborers. Those jobs that are available typically pay only minimum wage, provide little or no health benefits, and are often filled by new immigrants to the country. Many other manufacturing jobs have been transferred to foreign countries where labor, insurance, and litigation costs are far lower.
The Demand for New Skills
Even jobs traditionally seen as requiring less-specialized skills and training, such as jobs in construction, food services, and retail industries, now usually require detailed, often expensive training and licensure. Almost all jobs require a working knowledge of computer technology. More and more jobs require a high school education and postsecondary training programs. Most branches of the American military will not accept young men and women recruits with a GED. In community colleges, many vocational/technical associate degree programs require calculus as an admission requirement. Associate degree programs in sheet metal and tool and die training now require algebra and trigonometry. Today, business, industry, and the armed forces have no opportunities for dropouts.
New Jobs Require Greater Education and Skills
Eighty percent of the 30 fastest growing jobs will require an education beyond high school.
Thirty-six percent of all new jobs will require at least a bachelor’s degree.
(Hecker, 2005)
Continuing Technological Development
The evolution of increasingly sophisticated job skills demands higher student competencies, and the only technological certainty is that we will experience more change. Public school students must not only master high levels of academic proficiency and complex technological skills, but must also build a sufficiently strong educational foundation for ongoing development so that they can continue to explore and learn for the rest of their lives.
The Relationship Between Education and Income
In recent decades, there has been a growing understanding of the relationship between salary and education that further supports the role of education as an individual’s civil right. The best way to predict lifetime income levels—to predict those who will live their lives in poverty and those who will enjoy the benefits of the middle class—is education level. Without sufficient education, there is little or no hope for a stable economic life (figure 1.2, p. 7).
Figure 1.2: Predicted Yearly Income Based on Educational Level (National Center for Education Statistics, 2002, p. 163)
American workers without an adequate education are underemployed, work for minimum wage, often hold two or three part-time jobs, or are unemployed or unemployable. Many of these poverty-level adults may decline into depression and despair and fall victim to drug and alcohol abuse, dysfunctional family life, and socially unacceptable behavior. Large numbers turn to crime and end up in jails and prisons. The number of men and women in prison in the United States has doubled in the past 20 years. For decades, over 80% of prison inmates in the United States have been dropouts; well over 50% are illiterate (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1999). In addition, the cost of public education’s failures is high:
The cost of retaining one child is $6,500 per grade (Shepard & Smith, 1990).
The cost of special education services per child is $9,369 per year (National Education Association, 2006).
The cost of lost taxes, lost wages, and lost productivity over their lifetimes will “cost our nation more than $260 billion” (Spellings, 2005).
As the economic marketplace of the world has changed in both developed and developing nations, there is an ever-growing disparity between those who have high-quality education and those who do not. Today the differences that characterize and separate the various social classes are more and more dramatic. Simultaneously, the wealth of the most affluent nations has soared to unparalleled heights while a growing “underclass” of citizens living in poverty has suffered declining economic opportunities. The rich have become richer and the poor poorer. The result is an “apartheid of ignorance” where education is the key factor that separates the rich from the poor, economic opportunity from economic despair, and the good life from the tragic world of the “other America.” Those who are well-educated have access to the richest economic system that the world has ever known. For those who lack education, the door of opportunity is slammed shut. The apartheid of ignorance has become an unavoidable reality in the United States.
An Emerging Science of Teaching and Learning
The second development driving the new American revolution in education is the emergence of a sophisticated research base for teaching and learning. After hundreds of years with little more than philosophy and theory as the foundation for teaching and learning, research has suddenly provided a strong and growing structure to guide the field of education. Perhaps the most important of these insights are the conclusions of research on schools where poor and minority students have been learning effectively. This research provides new understanding about how schools can effectively address the most challenging task in public education: teaching the vast numbers of our nation’s children who live in poverty. There is a growing consensus that underachieving poor children of any ethnic background can achieve high standards of academic excellence and break the cycle of poverty.
This research base includes a variety of specific areas of inquiry. Perhaps most important is the neuroscience research and research on human growth and development. Neuroscience research
