The New Century’s Challenge for Education
Joel Barker, Founder & Chairman, The Institute for Strategic Exploration
Educational leaders face a special challenge in the new century. The role of technology is dramatically changing the face of K-12 education. The long term consequences of global change challenge many American’s assumptions about what a good education is.

Barker, futurist and independent scholar and co-author of Five Regions of the Future, took attendees on a tour of the next 20 years and illuminated their crucial role.

Author Kozol: Protect kids from meaninglessness

The author most recently of The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, he stated he is not opposed to testing or high standards — or the teaching of phonics to young readers.

“Tests used judiciously are instruments of guidance to good teachers and warning signals to society,” he said. “But tests and standards without prior equity, without equal resources for all children, are not instruments of decent change. They are simply clubs with which to bludgeon children from the hour of their birth and are humiliating to administrators and their teachers.”

The disgrace of America’s public schools, he contends, is the “hyper-segregation” of inner-city schools. Some schools are nearly all minority students, either all black or a mix of black and Latino students. He cited a school district in the South Bronx with 11,000 students, of whom just 22 are white. A classroom photograph from that school is indistinguishable from a photograph of a Mississippi school in 1935, he said. Spending in the Bronx district is $11,000 per pupil a year. In suburban districts just minutes away, per-pupil spending ranges from $19,000 to $23,000.

Under President George W. Bush, less than 50 percent of New York children eligible for pre-kindergarten programs actually get to attend them, even though the state claims to have universal pre-kindergarten, he said. Meanwhile, affluent parents in New York City spend $23,000 a year to send their children to elite “pre-Ivy” preschools.

But inner-city schools are being held hostage by the No Child Left Behind Act. More affluent suburban schools can afford to disregard it, but inner-city schools need the money.

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It doesn’t take children long to learn the differences between hidden and explicit rules. If we have any hope of changing how we view children and how they are expanding their choices, we will need to learn more about the children themselves as we better understand their behavior. This is research-supported view of Ruby Payne, author of a book on children and how they react to issues like race and class – factors that have an important impact on how well children do in school, which students they become friends with.

Payne, founder of a consulting firm in Highland, Texas, known as aha! Process Inc., has studied individual students both in and out of the classroom. It’s all about money and mindset, she said. It’s up to school personnel and the community to help the young people learn to understand what is going on, Payne told the attendees. Once children can articulate their concerns, they are better able to modify their behavior. The impact is important for the adults and the children who will continue to work on the research, giving children additional choices in and out of school, she said.