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By Rebecca Knight Margaret Spellings, US secretary of education, is stepping up efforts to garner support among US business leaders for the No Child Left Behind Act, a series of education reforms that she said is "urgent and essential" to the future of America's ability to remain competitive. Her overtures come on the heels of new nationwide test results that show America's public school students are doing significantly better in maths since NCLB took effect in 2002, but that reading achievement has not shown similar gains. "[The business community] absolutely 'gets it'," she said, in an interview with the Financial Times. "They're almost frightened; they understand that we're either going to improve human capital in the United States or companies are going to go elsewhere. They have a fiduciary responsibility to make their companies work in any event." The Act, the standards-based education programme aimed at increasing the accountability of US schools, is up for possible reauthorisation by Congress this year. It has come under fire from educators and some political leaders for its narrow curriculum focus on reading and maths at the expense of other subjects, and its over-reliance on standardised test results as the only measure of student performance. Arthur Rothkopf, senior vice president of the US Chamber of Commerce, said that the law is not the "be all and end all", but that it has become a "symbol" of efforts to improve American competitiveness. "If it becomes weakened, America is going to face a crisis of not enough skilled, educated workers," he said. Framing the issue as a matter of economic urgency, Ms Spellings recently toured the US Midwest soliciting ideas from business leaders on ways to improve NCLB. She said "the current law is hawkish and vigorous", but conceded that improvements could be made. She noted, in particular, that the law, which focuses mainly on children aged 8-14, ought to encompass high-school programmes and concentrate more on the science curriculum. In recent years, maths and science – fields considered crucial to a skilled workforce – have become key weaknesses in the US economy. A report out last week by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, shows that while the US boasts one of the most highly educated populations in the world, other countries are overtaking it by producing young college graduates at a faster rate, particularly in the sciences. The US turns out about 1,100 science graduates with university-level degrees per 100,000 employed 25- to 34-year-olds, compared to the OECD average of 1,295. In most countries, the number of science graduates has also increased faster than the overall number of graduates. "I've been saying this for some time: we have real problems as we look around the world. Our college attainment rates are slipping. And when the jobs of the future are rooted in knowledge and innovation, that's a troubling indicator," she said. Copyright The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. |
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