21st Century Schools for a 21st Century Economy
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Printable FormatSenator Obama discusses the need for both additional resources and reform in American schools if students are to compete in the 21st century economy. You can read about the legislation he's introduced to create 20 Innovation Districts across the country.
Podcast Transcript:
Hello, this is Senator Barack Obama, and today is Thursday, March 16, 2006. You know, it's a truism, these days that we live in a knowledge economy. That if, you don't have the kinds of skills to compete in a global world with young people from China or India that you're not going to be able to find a job that pays a living wage and allows you to support a family. Despite the fact that everybody talks about it, we are still not doing enough about it. The fact of the matter is that today we are failing too many of our children. We are sending them out into a 21st century economy, by sending them through the doors of schools that were designed in the agricultural era. We live in a world where the most valuable skill you can sell is knowledge. Revolutions and technology and communications have created an entire economy of high-tech, high-wage jobs that can be located anywhere that there is an internet connection. You know, this podcast is a testimony to that technology. Unfortunately, right now, America is in danger of losing this competition. We now have the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized country. By the 12th grade, our children are scoring lower on their math and science tests than almost any other group of children in the world. Countries like China are graduating eight times as many engineers as we do. So, if we are serious about meeting this challenge, if we truly believe in our public schools, then we have a moral responsibility to do better. We have got to break out of this either or mentality that surrounds the debate in education, where it asks us to choose between more money or more reform, but never both. The truth is, is that if we're going to fix our schools, we do need more resources, we've got to create smaller classrooms, early childhood education, make sure there are computers in every classroom. But, we're also going to have to reform and redesign how that classroom teaches.
So, one of the things that I'm trying to do is to see how can we spur innovation in local school districts across the country that want to become seedbeds for reform. What I've proposed is the creation of "Innovation Districts." We'd select 20 across the country, entire school districts, not just schools that are committed to really changing how we do business in the schools, and are committed to delivering results. Meaning, young people who are literate, who understand math and science, and can go to college well prepared. Now, there are a whole set of reforms and innovations that need to take place, but I want to focus on one that is most important, and that has to do with teacher recruitment, training, and retention. Now, every study shows that the single most important factor in whether or not a young person does well in school is the quality of their teachers. When President Bush passed the No Child Left Behind Act, one of the promises he made was a highly qualified teacher in every classroom. We have not achieved that. The fact of the matter is, is that in schools across the country, there are young people who are with teachers who are not trained in the subject that they are teaching. Those schools that are impoverished and are the most underperforming are most likely to have the least experienced teachers. Those teachers don't get any preparation or support. After a few years of experience, the ones who are best in the classroom often will leave to pick wealthier, less challenging schools. The result is that some of our neediest children end up with less-experienced, poorly paid teachers; they are far less likely to be teaching subjects in which they have any training whatsoever. Minority students are twice as likely to have these teachers. In my own state of Illinois, students in high poverty schools are more than three times as likely to have teachers who don't have training in the area in which they are teaching. So, we've got to really get serious about teacher recruitment and training.
There are a couple things we want to do: encourage young people who are the best and the brightest, and who want to go into teaching to have the support they need to get top-notch training. There are teachers' academies that have been set up all across the country, but there aren't enough of them. The Innovation Districts would provide teacher academies hopefully across the country that could train a whole new cadre of young people who are excited about the prospects of teaching in the school system.
The second thing we have to do is we have to match up these young teachers with master teachers. There's no other profession where we just plop somebody in the middle of the job, they're on their own, they've got no support, they've got no direction, they've got no training. Certainly that's not how we should go about training our teachers in our classroom. So the idea of matching young, inexperienced teachers with master teachers who can provide them with the insights and the skills to develop curriculum, to handle their students in a way that leads to learning: that's something we're hoping these Innovation Districts provide.
A third area that we want to make sure we are dealing with is ongoing professional development. Allowing teachers to take time both during the school year, and during the summers, to gain additional expertise in their subject areas, that's something that we'd like to see Innovation Districts do.
And finally, we'd like, frankly, to see teachers make more money. If they're doing a good job, if they have a particular expertise in math and science, if they're willing to teach in underperforming schools, then they should be paid commensurate with their experience, their skill level, and their commitment.
All of these things could make enormous impact in what happens in public schools all across the country. And I'm hopeful that we're going to be able to generate some bi-partisan support around this issue. Anybody who is listening to this podcast knows how much education has meant in thier lives, we want to make sure that every child in America has that same opportunity.
Okay, guys, I've got to go vote. We are voting on the budget today. It's a sad state of affairs. We just voted to increase the debt limit; the U.S. total debt, at this point exceeds eight trillion dollars, that's eight trillion, with a "t." So, we've got to get our fiscal house in order here in Washington. I'm not sure it's going to happen under the current leadership in Congress. We're going to see what kind of difference we can make to make sure that veterans' programs, student loan programs, low income housing assistance programs, homeland security dollars are receiving the highest priority, not just tax cuts for the wealthiest 0.1 percent of the population. Hope you guys have a wonderful week, and I will talk to you soon. Bye bye.