Washington Post article

I was most struck with Jay Matthews' criticism of what he characterized as "win-lose" economic assumptions and scare tactics used by the report...

I was an economics major for a while, and I remember something about supply and demand affecting the cost of a good. Among other things, the book assumes that the low-skilled labor market as a good whose demand in the US is decreasing because of technological innovations that automate many aspects of production, and the cheap availability of such labor abroad.

Matthews alludes to the idea that the growing middle class in these new players in the world economy drives an increase in consumption that also increases the demand for labor, both high skilled and low skilled, around the world. Supporting this idea, for example: there is presently a shortage of computer programmers in India relative to the newly increased demand for such talent. Likewise, the relative costs of labor and shipping seem to continue creating conditions favorable to Japanese auto manufacturers "offshoring" their domestic automobile production to the US.

Hence, Matthews maintains that these forecasts of doom and gloom in the US economy are difficult to hold with any certainty, and calls for a radical overhaul of our education system need better ground to stand on. Do I agree? I think his cynicism about the reports of such high profile "commissions" is probably warranted to a point. Nevertheless, the substance of policy-making is predicated on what carries political currency, and many key decision-makers (and deciders) will read this report and likely give it significant weight. I don't think that the first commission's report went unnoticed...I think the Gates foundation was probably informed by it, for example (I don't know this for a fact) and such philanthropic engagement with ed policy is having huge implications.... Such reports at least provide a common reference point for policy conversations like the one we're having.

What remains clear to me, as an urban educator, is that our city school systems are presently not delivering students prepared to take advantage of the new employment opportunities offered by a globalized economy. I do not need to wait to see what the future holds, because I can see the academic decimation of low income students of color every day. Given the heavy representation of urban schools leaders on the commission, I think their hyperbole is perhaps a bias towards action around a problem that PRESENTLY afflicts our nations cities: the old manufacturing economy is gone and large concentrations of poor minority students are being failed by the system, despite significant expenditures, because they do not leave high school ready to make meaningful progress in college. My perception is that an unfortunate percentage of these students find themselves working low-level service jobs and unable to get ahead in expensive cities, or working as some part of the black market to survive and quickly wind up incarcerated, and they simply perpetuate a costly cycle of urban poverty. To any urban schools chancellor, despite any good news they may have to report about getting high school graduation rates from 55 to 58% (woo hoo), the demand to remedy this situation couldn't be clearer. Radical change is warranted in the presence of such a crisis.