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December 14, 2006
New workforce skills report
This morning, the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce released its report: Tough Choices or Tough Times. The Commission (and the report) is a follow up to the influential 1990 report America’s Choice: high skills or low wages! that helped define the "high road" strategy for economic growth.
The new report continues that theme into the new Creative Economy. They argue that the only strategy America can take to be successful in this new economic environment is through creativity and innovation. Routine work will increasingly be done either by skilled people in developing (i.e. low wage) countries or will be automated and done by machines. They define the creative tasks as:
• Research
• Development
• Design
• Marketing & Sales
• Global Supply Chain Management
I can quibble a little about this -- specifically that "routine" work defines how the task is carried out, not necessarily the nature of the task itself. As the report mentions in passing, building furniture can be a creative, rather than a routine, task. This is where creativity and innovation come in to play. The high road strategy includes infusing creativity into otherwise routine tasks in order to make them higher valued added.
The report's recommendations are training and education specific. They explicitly call for a re-design of the educational system as a fundamental change needed to prevent a decline in our standard of living. They include:
• Revamping the high school-college transition. High school would end for most students after 10th grade, when they would take rigorous State Board Exams set to what they should be able to do to succeed in state colleges. Students meeting that Board Exam standard would be able to go directly to state technical schools and colleges as freshmen. But students could choose to stay in high school to prepare for entrance to selective colleges, if they wished.
• Reallocating funds to high priority strategies for improving system performance. The new progression through high school and college would release nearly $60 billion in funds that can be used to make sure that students would in fact be ready for college by the time they are 16.
• Pre-K for all. A third of the savings would be used to provide high-quality early childhood education for all four-year-olds and all low-income three-year olds.
• Redesigning how schools are funded. The last third of the savings would be used to provide more money to schools serving low-income and other disadvantaged children.
• Local funding would be abolished; the funds would be raised and distributed to the schools by the state.
• Redesigning how schools are managed. All public schools would be managed by independent contractors operating under performance contracts managed by the local school districts. Only those schools that succeeded in improving the performance of their students would be funded. Parents would be free to send their children to any of these schools they wished.
• Educating the current workforce to a high standard. Adults who are currently in the workforce would have the right to a free education to the same standard that would be set for high school students under the new system.
• Creating personal competitiveness accounts. Inspired by the GI bill, the federal government would deposit an initial $500 into each account at birth, and these accounts would allow everyone to receive ongoing education and training throughout their lives.
The report seems to be generally on the same track as the recent by the Conference Board (see earlier posting) and was highlighted in a recent TIME cover story (see posting).
With increasing attention to these issues, let us hope that the policy makers and educators are paying attention. I know from personal experience that some of this is seeping down to the grassroots. Last night at a local town hall meeting with the new incoming DC Mayor (Adrian Fenty), parents talked about reinstating a broader curriculum, including arts and music, in the local schools. As more and more people start talking about this, maybe some thing will actually happen!
(Thanks to the blog Convergence for pointing this out.)
Posted by Ken Jarboe at December 14, 2006 11:54 AM
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