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The Corporation's Program
New Directions for Carnegie Corporation of New York
A Report to the Board by Vartan Gregorian, President
February 2, 1999
EDUCATION
The
end of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth
were the age of the mass production industrial worker, in which
public schools were expected to provide no more than very basic
skills and a sense of common citizenship for most children. A century
later, ours has become the age of the knowledge worker, in which
education has taken on greater importance for the personal development
of individuals, for the civic, social, and economic development
of the nation, and for the search for solutions to the global challenges
facing humankind. Today education is seen by governments and societies
around the world as a driver of economic and social change and as
a primary means for adapting to it. Our own nation's future depends
on the priority given to the continued development of new knowledge
and investments in human capital. The economic payoff of education
for individuals is strong. Income differentials between those with
a college education and those without are pronounced. Undeniably,
opportunities to acquire good jobs and income are requiring higher
levels of formal education.
Since
Andrew Carnegie's era, the United States has made great strides
in providing a decent education for the great majority of its citizens.
"Perhaps the greatest idea that America has given the world
is the idea of education for all," remarked the legendary president
of the University of Chicago, Robert Hutchins. More people than
ever before have access to basic education, and more have the opportunity
to attain some form of higher education. But in light of the rapidly
changing economic, technological, and social context and of our
greatly increased knowledge of how human learning occurs, the response
of our education system is inadequate. The traditional structures
and formal systems for providing young people an education are often
outmoded by the measure of today's and certainly tomorrow's needs.
Education's bureaucratized structure inherited from another age
must be modernized to fit the new circumstances.
EARLY
CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND CARE
Cumulative
research evidence from neuroscience, psychology, physiology, and
nutrition indicates that the most rapid physical and mental growth
occurs during infancy and early childhood. The early years are critical
in the formation and development of intelligence, motivation, and
social behavior. The traditional focus of public investment in education
only after a child reaches school age is shortsighted in light of
research on early learning and the rising need for child care by
working parents.
The
major problems facing young children and families are well described
in the Corporation's two early childhood reports, Starting Points
(1994) and Years of Promise (1996). In our current social
and economic context, parenting has become more stressful, especially
for those living in low-income communities. Even though time-saving
conveniences have, in theory, enriched modern family life during
past generations, many of today's parents are juggling multiple
roles without adequate social supports and knowledge about effective
childrearing practices. Child care and preschool education are not
available on a broad enough basis, and the quality of the settings
and offerings for the majority of the 13 million children in early
childhood programs is poor to mediocre. Under these conditions,
millions of children are not learning enough to prepare them for
school. Moreover, as Years of Promise points out, in their
progress from preschool through the early grades, many children,
most often in urban settings, gradually lose their natural curiosity
and enthusiasm for learning. Their achievement drops off, their
motivation declines, and their behavioral problems grow. The pattern
of educational underachievement and failure to master basic skills,
such as reading and computation, by the end of the third grade become
strong predictors of academic, social, and health problems in adolescence.
Although
national acceptance of the merits of early childhood education and
care has grown, it remains an underfinanced, unevenly staffed, highly
fragmented non-system that many parents cannot successfully navigate.
Building on the foundation's leadership role in the early childhood
field, the Corporation intends, in cooperation with other organizations
and institutions, to promote research and policy analysis designed
to expand the availability of affordable high-quality programs —
programs that will improve all children's chances of success in
school and better meet the needs of working parents. The Corporation
will support new analytic work on the design of an effective early
learning system, concentrating on issues of financing, professional
development, and consumer education.
In
the financing and human resource development areas, we may support
formation of a small number of national or state-based commissions
with selected policymakers, business leaders, and child care experts
to create comprehensive financing and staffing plans and to disseminate
the models elsewhere. Other priorities might include the development
of more effective training models and analyses of licensing and
accreditation policies that provide incentives to strengthen the
preparation of early childhood educators.
Stimulating
new public and private investments in high-quality early education
and care will require better understanding of parents' emerging
needs. To increase public demand, we may support broad dissemination
of information about such programs through targeted strategic communication
campaigns and "consumer reports" that rate the effectiveness
of services. Ways to enhance parents' roles as children's first
teachers will also be considered. Corporation staff members are
exploring the feasibility of creating an "entrepreneurial design
and development fund" for promising early childhood parenting
programs. The fund would provide advice on quality enhancement,
strategic planning, marketing, evaluation, and sound business practices
to help spread innovation nationally.
Making
a successful transition from preschool through the primary grades
is critically important for young children. According to experts,
mastery of basic skills by the end of the third grade would have
a significant impact on students' academic and social trajectories
and, by reducing placements in special education, would result in
cost savings for education. Years of Promise offers the vision
of a more integrated strategy linking parenting support, better
early childhood education, and stronger follow-through in schools,
especially for the nation's urban families. The recent National
Research Council study, Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young
Children (1997), also provides a useful framework for linking
preschool and school. As the report points out, learning to read
is a lengthy process that, optimally, begins early in life with
the development of rich language skills. Family and child-care settings
for children in low-income communities often provide relatively
impoverished language and literacy environments, and many primary
and preschool teachers have had no training in effective approaches
to literacy.
To
strengthen the transition from early childhood to the early grades,
we will undertake a limited number of projects to strengthen the
preparation of preschool and primary teachers; engage professional
associations as well as textbook publishers in incorporating the
research on reading into professional standards and educational
materials for early childhood and primary grades; and encourage
urban preschool and after-school programs to promote early literacy
skills. Our work in strengthening reading and also math skills in
the early grades will be linked to our efforts in urban school reform
and after-school supports for learning.
URBAN
SCHOOLS
Over
the past decade, considerable progress has been made in upgrading
education. More coherent federal and state policies to establish
higher expectations for all students have been put in place, and
new curriculum frameworks and new types of assessments are being
developed to guide and evaluate learning to these standards. At
the local level, hundreds of urban schools are involved in school
redesign networks or are forming partnerships with other community
organizations. As a result there are increases in test scores in
many individual schools and some cities. More minority students
are taking math, science, and advanced placement classes, and the
historical gap between dropout rates for black and white students
has significantly narrowed. Average scores in urban school districts
continue to be low, however, and the pace of change and lack of
clear evidence that reform can raise achievement substantially and
on a broad scale has led to increasingly vigorous challenges to
public education, with calls for market mechanisms and privatization
to speed up change.
The
goal of high standards for all students meets its greatest challenge
in the nation's cities. Today urban schools enroll about 24 percent
of all U.S. public school students, 35 percent of all students who
are poor, and 43 percent of all minority students. Conversations
about standards, testing, vouchers, public and private charter schools,
funding, equity, desegregation, governance, privatization, social
promotion, and the like are discussions, at the core, about public
education in the central cities. Nowhere does a national resolve
to strengthen our education system face a tougher test than in our
inner cities. There, every problem is more pronounced, every solution
harder to implement. Teacher shortages, drug abuse, dilapidated
buildings, low student achievement, illiteracy, homelessness, teen
pregnancy, crime, and inadequate teaching materials and technology
complicate the destiny of our urban schools. The problems demand
both systemic and targeted solutions developed in the context of
enormous political, demographic, and economic challenges, social
diversity, and scarce resources.
Change
in urban public education in the United States is taking many forms,
but a consensus has emerged over the past several years about which
strategies seem the most effective in turning around urban schools
and school systems. These strategies include setting fewer, clearer
goals focused on challenging academic standards; establishing stronger,
collective accountability for student and school performance; securing
the services of an experienced teacher corps that has mastery of
subject matter and proper pedagogical training; strengthening support
for teachers and leaders; increasing community involvement; and
building public support for urban education.
As
it now stands, there are many excellent schools but no urban school
districts in which all the schools are of high quality. The present
form of centralized administration of urban schools, developed in
the progressive period of the early twentieth century, attempted
to bring standardization and rationality to what had been highly
politicized collections of schools. Over the past decade, there
has been a drive to reduce district offices, which have become ineffective
bureaucracies stifling creative initiative, and to decentralize
reform efforts to individual schools. While this removes some of
the barriers for schools that can change themselves, it leaves the
majority of schools without the services or supports needed to improve.
Currently,
there are ongoing studies by many foundations to assess their efforts
and investments in public education, particularly in urban education.
These evaluations are crucial for sustaining progress and for providing
accountability along with assurances as to the future of public
education. It is incumbent on many foundations that have been active
in the realm of public education to cooperate with each other and
with schools in implementing the next phase of reform in order to
help school districts continue reorganizing and raising their standards.
Recent
reform efforts have focused considerable attention on teaching,
but almost nothing has been done to address the nature and quality
of leadership provided by urban school principals and superintendents.
A good principal can create a climate that fosters excellent teaching
and learning, while an incompetent one can quickly thwart the progress
of the most dedicated reformers. The urban superintendent in turn
is a highly visible figure on the front lines of education reform.
Each of the jobs is changing dramatically, facing leaders with complex
demands that they have not been trained for and that even the most
experienced of them have difficulty meeting. Recruiting and preparing
leaders who can redesign and reform schools and districts to accelerate
academic achievement rather than just maintain the status quo is
therefore an urgent need.
Creating
schools that have well-prepared teachers, that are well led, and
that have high expectations for all students is essential. But there
are many learning environments outside the school that have
powerful effects on children's success in school. For school-aged
students from moderate- and higher-income households, the after-school
hours often provide a rich array of sports, music, and cultural
activities. But for many students growing up in unsafe, inner-city
neighborhoods, the after-school hours are a missed opportunity at
best. As urban schools begin to put higher academic standards in
place, they are beginning to see the value of after-school programs,
since some children will need more time and support than others
to reach the standards. Reflecting concerns about safety as well
as underachievement, after-school programs on a large scale are
being developed in many cities. They are often, however, more custodial
and recreational than educational.
In
the coming year the Corporation will pursue several avenues for
expanding reform efforts from schools to districts and for stimulating
effective solutions across the nation. These include analyses of
progress and barriers to change in a number of cities; identification
and dissemination of effective district practices with respect to
key roles, such as the professional development of teachers; assistance
for local school change; the institution of accountability mechanisms;
and mobilization of public support. The Corporation will also support
analyses of the patterns of recruitment and training of urban school
principals and superintendents and help to devise better models
for identifying and training a new generation of urban school leaders.
Finally, the foundation will build on its work on community/after-school
supports for children and adolescents, seeking to increase and document
the effectiveness of after-school and extended-service programs
in promoting academic achievement for students in urban areas.
HIGHER
EDUCATION
During
the past two centuries, especially since the founding of land-grant
colleges and universities under the Morrill Act of 1862, American
higher education has been the backbone of the nation's economic,
cultural, scientific, technological, and political progress. Today,
higher education in the United States leads the world in the number,
variety, funding, and availability of its colleges and universities.
According to some authorities, as many as three-quarters of the
best universities in the world are located in the United States.
We have 3,706 colleges and universities, of which 1,462 are two-year
institutions. Together, they enroll approximately 14.3 million students
and employ 2.6 million individuals, including a little more than
1 million faculty members or teaching assistants — more people
than are in the automobile, steel, and textile industries combined.
At present, U.S. higher education is a $250 billion enterprise amounting
to about 3 percent of our nation's gross national product.
The
university remains a powerful engine of intellectual, cultural,
and scientific innovation and growth. In addition to the classic
requirements to advance and spread knowledge through scholarship,
teaching, and publication, institutions of higher learning are expected
to
- Guard
our past, our traditions, and our memory
- Articulate
our aspirations and help shape the future
- Harness
science and technology for the service of society
- Invent
and discover solutions to the problems of today and tomorrow
- Promote
equality along with quality, accessibility along with excellence,
and liberality of thought along with rigor
- Provide
opportunities for students to learn many skills, including ability
in conceptual analysis, and train them in their future professions
- Develop
in students responsible attitudes, values, behavior, understanding,
judgment, and decision making with respect to individual and social
ethics and the exercise of citizenship
- Lift
the intellectual and spiritual level of our democracy.
Finally,
in harmony with their mission, they were and still are expected
to be the guardians of academic freedom, following the Jeffersonian
imperative to the University of Virginia that education be based
"on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we
are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate
any error so long as reason is left free to combat it."
Overall,
American higher education has done well in almost all of the preceding
categories. It has educated the nation's technical, managerial,
and professional workforce and provided generations of national
leaders. Its unparalleled capacity for basic research has given
the United States its formidable scientific, technological, and
economic dominance. Currently, however, higher education is facing
important and complex challenges. It must determine the proper balance
between undergraduate teaching and research; it must enhance efficiency
and productivity without sacrificing quality; and it must apply
the principles of sound management and financial planning while
keeping a college education within reach of the great majority of
Americans. Not least, it must cope with the impact of the information
revolution. Two critical issues with which the Corporation is concerned
and that institutions of higher learning must grapple with during
the next decade are the reform of teacher education and examination
of the purposes of the undergraduate curriculum.
Teacher
education. If we are to require higher standards of learning
from students and from schools, we must also require such standards
from teachers. The nation's efforts to reform public school systems
and create schools adequate for the twenty-first century cannot
succeed without reforming university teacher preparation programs.
At least 2 million new teachers will be needed over the next decade.
The quality of the teacher corps that is produced will largely determine
the success or failure of our public education systems and affect
the future of the country and democracy for years to come. In our
view, the U.S. higher education system cannot escape its historical,
moral, and social obligations to ensure the quality of instruction
and the preparation of teachers.
During
the past forty-five years, a succession of studies, reports, and
commissions have highlighted the responsibility of higher education
to provide a high-quality education to the nation's teaching force.
James B. Conant's The Education of American Teachers (1963)
called for colleges and universities to assume greater responsibility
to defend their product. The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education's
1973 report, Continuity and Discontinuity, recommended bringing
theory and practice together in clinical settings and highlighted
the urgent need to train teachers for urban school districts. The
1986 Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy's report, A
Nation Prepared, and the 1996 report of the National Commission
on Teaching & America's Future, What Matters Most, both
pointed to the obvious — that well-educated teachers are the
key to successful school reform.
Despite
these and countless other reports, some welcome progress, and the
leadership of several deans and educational associations, teacher
education is not at the top of the agenda of university and college
presidents. Within the universities, schools of education are often
effectively isolated and given second-class status. Intellectual
and educational interactions between the faculties of arts and sciences
and schools of education are often minimal or nonexistent. Currently
only 500 of the nation's 1,200 education schools are nationally
accredited. Even though research has clearly established the connection
between the content knowledge of teachers and the level of student
knowledge, only a few states now require teachers to major or minor
in the subjects they are assigned to teach. In some instances a
B.A. degree in education is considered enough to certify one to
teach any subject. In his April 27, 1998, message, Moving from
Analysis to Action, Bruce Alberts, president of the National
Academy of Sciences, observes of teachers that "far too few
of them have the understanding of science or math that they need
to be able to teach these subjects effectively in schools today.
. . . Teachers are generally taught pedagogy, divorced from any
subject matter, whereas to be a good math teacher, one needs focused
preparation on how to teach mathematics. And to be a good science
teacher, one needs focused preparation on how to teach science."
The
effects on students of inadequate teacher preparation in subject
matter are not confined to science and math. On the last national
test of student knowledge of American history in 1994, conducted
by the federally funded National Assessment of Educational Progress,
57 percent of high school seniors were found to be "below basic."
The National Center for Education Statistics (1996) reports that
59 percent of students in middle school and 43 percent of high school
students are studying history with a teacher who has not earned
a college degree with at least a minor in history.
The
disregard for academic subject matter is best illustrated by the
fact that almost three-quarters of elementary school teachers and
one-third of the nation's high school teachers major only in education.
Nationally, undergraduate students majoring in education have had
lower SAT and ACT test scores than students in other programs of
study. In 1993, only 16 percent of education majors scored in the
top quartile, compared with 33 percent of humanities majors. Education
majors were overrepresented in the bottom quartile, at 30 percent.
In addition to weak subject matter preparation, most teachers lack
sufficient knowledge of child or adolescent development, intergroup
relations, educational technology, and the world outside the United
States to be effective educators of the next generation. According
to a recent federal survey, a majority of teachers themselves admit
to feeling ill-prepared to meet many of the instructional challenges
they face.
Teaching
is a central mission of our higher education institutions. Their
faculties, presidents, provosts, and boards, not to mention state
legislatures and governors, must bear the burden of responsibility
for the quality of our teacher corps. To blame the teachers or to
blame the unions does not absolve universities and colleges of their
legal, social, and moral responsibilities. After all, it is they
who graduate and certify our teachers. For the proper education
of teachers in both subject matter and pedagogy as well as to ensure
a common vision, colleges and university leaders must aim for a
greater integration of the faculties and courses in the arts and
sciences and the education schools. The presidents of universities
and colleges must be held accountable for the standards, the education,
and the qualifications of the teaching profession. There should
be no differentiation between admission and graduation standards
of colleges of arts and sciences and schools of education. All education
schools should be nationally accredited. Since educational technology
plays an increasingly important role in students' lives, with the
potential for transforming learning, teacher preparation must incorporate
such technology into its core curriculum.
Every
institution of higher education should also have a serious and ongoing
relationship with local schools. Nationally, about 30 percent of
all first-time university or college freshmen have to take a remedial
course in basic academic skills. The nation cannot indefinitely
afford the cost and duplication involved in higher education's enormous
remedial work. Last but not least, the current forms of inservice
professional development of teachers should be revamped. Low-intensity
workshops on "hot" topics or miscellaneous courses for
credit and salary enhancement are luxuries that students, teachers,
districts, and unions cannot afford. An imaginative reorganization
of professional development programs is called for.
Raising
the standards of schools of education, revamping their curricula,
and accrediting them are not alone sufficient to raise the status
of teachers and foster an appreciation of their central role in
our society. Fair compensation of teachers, with a reward mechanism
for outstanding teachers, is essential to attract, recognize, and
retain the best talent dedicated to teaching. After all, it is to
our teachers that we entrust the education of our children and youth
and, hence, our future.
The
Corporation's limited funds will not permit us to deal with 1,200
individual schools of education. We will concentrate initially on
dissemination of the best models of teacher education to encourage
their wider adoption; assistance to governors and other state policymakers
in developing incentives and accountability mechanisms to promote
more widespread change; and the promotion of broader public understanding
of the importance of teaching quality.
Liberal
arts education. Determining the place of the liberal arts curriculum
in the twenty-first century and the position of science in, and
the impact of technology on, that curriculum; the nature of the
balance among the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities,
and fine arts; the future of scholarship and its dissemination;
and how to the integrate knowledge across the tangle of specialties
and subspecialties — these are only some of the monumental
tasks that must be faced by colleges and universities in the next
decade.
A
liberal arts education does more than acquaint students with the
past or prepare them for the future. It gives them, must
give them, a perspective for reflection upon the nature and texture
of their own lives. It provides them, must provide them,
with standards by which to measure human achievement. At a time
of renewed and unilateral emphasis on narrow, one-dimensional, vocational
and preprofessional college education, we must remind our students,
our parents, and society at large that the university or college
is not an institution where the product line is a unit or an object
and that the intrinsic worth of education cannot and should not
be measured in financial terms alone, even though we recognize the
harsh economic realities that force this view upon students. Learning
is a value-laden and lifelong process, where the goal is not growth
or market share but the free good of knowledge and thought about
who we are and how we live in the world around us. None of us can
predict the changes and experiences that the next fifty years will
bring. If students are given an education that fosters growth and
prepares their minds for a lifetime of imaginative inquiry, then
they will have received the greatest gift possible, turning them,
in the words of John Henry Newman (1875), "into more intelligent,
capable, active members of society."
The
value of education in general and liberal arts education in particular
lies in its ability to enhance men's and women's powers of rational
analysis and independent judgment and to develop mental adaptability,
a characteristic sorely needed in an era of rapid technological
change.
Our
quest, then, should consist of finding the golden mean between the
preparation for careers and the cultivation of values. Unless a
proper balance is restored, career training will be ephemeral in
applicability and limited in worth. As Alfred North Whitehead put
it in his Aims of Education (1929), "What we should
aim at producing is men [and women] who possess both culture and
expert knowledge in some special direction. Their expert knowledge
will give them the ground to start from, and their culture will
lead them as deep as philosophy and as high as art." We ought
to realize that a lopsided education is deficient.
As
we approach the twenty-first century, we are confronted with the
following questions and challenges: What will define an educated
person in the new age? Will we educate individuals who are able
to bring knowledge of their own and other cultures and histories,
as well as literacy in language and science, that will allow them
to understand and interpret the mass of information they will encounter
as they make judgments about public issues? Is liberal arts a costly
and "elitist" program or the best preparation for the
flexible knowledge-based economy of the future? How can students
best be prepared to manage the information and knowledge explosion
in an era of minute specialization and knowledge fragmentation?
In short, how must our institutions of higher education prepare
our students for life, work, and citizenship, safeguard our democratic
society, and meet our obligations in the world?
This
year marks the fortieth anniversary of C. P. Snow's The Two Cultures
and the Scientific Revolution (1959), which pointed to the widening
gulf between the humanities and the sciences. Over these four decades,
the distance between the two has only increased, leaving many citizens
unable to cope with scientific and technological advances, to understand
their effects, and to make judgment about their judicious use. We
have traveled far beyond the parameters established by John Dewey
in Philosophy and Civilization (1931). In this book, Dewey
recognized the revolutionary nature of science and technology and
appreciated that they could create new possibilities in life were
they to be "redirected from commercial to humanistic goals."
But he believed that the impact of science and technology was limited
to the "outward" forms of our civilization — its
"external habits, dominant interests, the conditions under
which they work and associate." He did not see science and
technology as having a transforming influence on our thoughts and
purposes: "Habits of thought and desire remain in substance
what they were before the rise of science, while the conditions
under which they take effect have been radically altered by science."
Today
this assumption is under challenge. Laser communications, nuclear
power, biotechnology, networked computers, and the like are precisely
shaping our "habits of thought and desire." They have
become a dominant source of our culture, even to changing the very
paradigms of knowledge. Rapidly evolving global communications are
bringing social changes that are so complex and far-reaching they
are not amenable to easy understanding. The volume of new information
is increasing at such a rapid pace that the class of 2000 will be
exposed to more new data in a year than their grandparents encountered
in a lifetime. Knowledge doubles every seven years. Ten thousand
scientific articles are published every day. Sixty-five percent
of all workers now use some type of information technology in their
jobs.
Yet,
for all of this, the American public remains strikingly scientifically
and technologically illiterate. According to Gerald Holton, in the
United States, "Less than 7 percent of U.S. adults can be called
scientifically literate by the most generous definition, only 13
percent have at least a minimum level of understanding of the power
of science, and 40 percent disagree with the statement "astrology
is not at all scientific." As far as higher education is concerned,
a formal plan for integrating science and technology into the liberal
arts curriculum exists at only one-fourth of higher education institutions.
The percentage of classes using information technology resources
is less than 25 percent nationally. Only 10 percent of classes use
the Internet or the World Wide Web.
Clearly,
as our society evolves, it is of paramount importance for the public
to understand the questions connected with the uses of science and
technology. Inculcating an understanding of science and the scientific
method and of the impact, both positive and negative, of technology
as it affects every single institution in our society is the responsibility
of our higher education system and our democratic society.
Another
major challenge for higher education is instilling a deep understanding
of our democracy. In the 1981 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement
of Teaching report, Higher Learning in the Nation's Service,
Ernest L. Boyer and Fred M. Hechinger decried the trend toward "civic
illiteracy" in the United States and recommended an updated
version of civic studies be included in the college curriculum.
More recently, the Institute for American Values report A Call
to Civil Society (1998) asks us collectively to rebuild our
civil society — that "sphere of our communal life in which
we answer together the most important questions: What is our purpose,
what is the right way to act, and what is the common good?"
The
American undergraduate curriculum and curricular reform have been
the subjects of intensive Corporation grantmaking and study at least
since 1930s under President Keppel. They have also been the focus
of innumerable studies sponsored by The Carnegie Foundation for
the Advancement of Teaching. Now, after a hiatus of sixteen years,
we plan to take up this issue again. During the coming year we intend
to probe questions raised about the future purposes of liberal arts
education and ways the Corporation can effectively respond. During
this exploratory year, the foundation will not accept unsolicited
proposals.
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