Según Andreas Schleicher de la OCDE, the United States is unique among countries in that the generation of workers entering the US workforce does not have higher college attainment levels than the generation about to leave the workforce. He further believes a key strategy to addressing this problem is improving equitable access to education across the board and that good examples of how to achieve this can be found in other education systems such as Finland, Canada, Japan or Korea. None of this sounds particularly new, but I wondered if Andreas were making the big picture education decisions, how would he address some of our key issues? We recently had the opportunity to discuss this further.
Andreas Schleicher is Special Advisor on Education Policy to OECD’s Secretary-General, and is Deputy Director for Education. También proporciona supervisión estratégica sobre el trabajo de la OCDE sobre el desarrollo y la utilización de habilidades y sus resultados sociales y económicos.. Esto incluye el Programa para la Evaluación de Estudiantes Internacionales (PISA), la Encuesta de la OCDE sobre las habilidades de los adultos (PIAAC), la Encuesta Internacional de Enseñanza y Aprendizaje de la OCDE (GRAN), y el desarrollo y análisis de puntos de referencia sobre el desempeño de los sistemas educativos (INES).
Should government provide tuition free education from pre-school through college?
There is no free education; someone has to pay. If governments provide free education from pre-school through college, they need to back that up with a steeply progressive tax system so that the better qualified people end up paying the bill eventually. The Nordic countries in Europe show that this can work, and work well. The other good option is to ask students to pay tuition and to back that up with a universal student support system that provides an income-contingent loan system complemented with a scheme of means-tested grants. In that way you minimize risks for students, avoid that they end up with huge debt that they cannot pay back, and you provide special assistance to those students who would otherwise be prevented from attending university. The UK shows how this can work. Providing college tuition-free without getting the money back through taxes for the better-educated means that the poor end up subsidizing the education of the rich.
Are you in favor of privatizing public schools?
Results from PISA show no performance advantage of private schools, once you account for social background. Sin embargo, cross-country analysis of PISA suggests that the prevalence of schools’ autonomy to define and elaborate their curricula and assessments relates positively to the performance of school systems, even after accounting for national income. School systems that provide schools with greater discretion in deciding student assessment policies, the courses offered, the course content and the textbooks used are also school systems that perform at higher levels. So perhaps the question for countries is not how many private or charter schools they have, but how they enable every public school to assume charter-type responsibility.
Since every child is probably not meant to pursue a liberal arts education, what would you do to make our children more competitive in the skilled trade jobs market?
Our data show that when employers are involved in designing curricula and delivering education programs at the post-secondary level, students seem to have a smoother transition from education into the labor market. Compared to purely government-designed curricula taught in school-based systems, learning in the workplace offers several advantages: it allows trainees to develop “hard” skills on modern equipment, y “soft” habilidades, such as teamwork, communication and negotiation, through real-world experience. Hands-on workplace training can also help to motivate disengaged youth to stay in or re-engage with the education system. Workplace training also facilitates recruitment by allowing employers and potential employees to get to know each other, while trainees contribute to the output of the training firm. Workplace learning opportunities are also a direct expression of employers’ necesidades, as employers will be ready to offer opportunities in areas where there is a skills shortage.
Do you think that the United States needs to do more in the area of early childhood education, y de ser así, qué?
One the one hand, the US falls well behind most countries in the industrialized world when it comes to early childhood education, and this is clearly a key lever to raise quality and equity in learning outcomes. Al mismo tiempo, the US does really well when you look at student performance in primary education, so-so when it comes to performance in middle school, and not very well when it comes to performance in high school. This suggests that students actually get quite a strong start, but the school system adds less year after year than what children in other countries learn. That is something you don’t address with better early childhood education but with a better school system.
What do you think is the best way to fund our public schools?
The US spends plenty of money on public schools, but our data show three things. Ante todo, a disproportionally high share of that spending does not make it into the classroom. En segundo lugar, spending is regressive in that schools in disadvantaged areas end up with less resources than schools in socially advantaged areas (in virtually all other industrialized countries it is the other way around). This does not allow the US to attract the most talented teachers into the most challenging classrooms, which would make public spending most effective. En tercer lugar, high performing countries tend to prioritize the quality of teachers and the size of classes. The trend in the US over the last decade has gone the other way around.
Photos courtesy of OECD.
En La Búsqueda Global para la Educación, unirse a mí y reconocidos a nivel mundial los líderes de opinión, incluyendo a Sir Michael Barber (Reino Unido), DR. Michael Bloquear (EE.UU.), DR. Leon Botstein (EE.UU.), Profesor Clay Christensen (EE.UU.), DR. Linda Darling-Hammond (EE.UU.), DR. Madhav Chavan (India), El profesor Michael Fullan (Canada), El profesor Howard Gardner (EE.UU.), El profesor Andy Hargreaves (EE.UU.), Profesor Yvonne Hellman (Países Bajos), Profesor Kristin Helstad (Noruega), Jean Hendrickson (EE.UU.), Profesor Rose Hipkins (Nueva Zelanda), Profesor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Honorable Jeff Johnson (Canada), Señora. Chantal Kaufmann (Bélgica), DR. Eija Kauppinen (Finlandia), Secretario de Estado Tapio Kosunen (Finlandia), Profesor Dominique Lafontaine (Bélgica), El profesor Hugh Lauder (Reino Unido), Profesor Ben Levin (Canada), Señor Ken Macdonald (Reino Unido), Profesor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Profesor R. Natarajan (India), DR. PAK NG (Singapur), DR. Denise Papa (Estados Unidos), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), DR. Diane Ravitch (EE.UU.), Richard Wilson Riley (EE.UU.), Sir Ken Robinson (Reino Unido), Profesor Pasi Sahlberg (Finlandia), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OCDE), DR. Anthony Seldon (Reino Unido), DR. David Shaffer (EE.UU.), DR. Kirsten Immersive Are (Noruega), Canciller Stephen Spahn (EE.UU.), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais EE.UU.), Profesor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Profesor Tony Wagner (EE.UU.), Sir David Watson (Reino Unido), Profesor Dylan Wiliam (Reino Unido), DR. Marcos Wormald (Reino Unido), Profesor Theo Wubbels (Países Bajos), El profesor Michael Young (Reino Unido), y el profesor Zhang Minxuan (De China) a medida que exploran las cuestiones de educación cuadro grande que todas las naciones se enfrentan hoy. La Búsqueda Global para la Educación Comunitaria Página
C. M. Rubin es el autor de dos ampliamente leído serie en línea por la que recibió un 2011 Premio Upton Sinclair, “La Búsqueda Global para la Educación” y “¿Cómo vamos a Leer?” Ella es también el autor de tres libros más vendidos, Incluido The Real Alice in Wonderland.
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