Author: Danny Crichton

I cried a little when I read this story.

The New York Times ran an article last week titled, “As School Exit Tests Prove Tough, States Ease Standards,” in which the reporter notes the typical cycles in exit exam difficulty. When exit exams are first released, they legitimately cover the knowledge expected of a high school graduate. As poor test scores roll in, legislatures quickly work to ease the difficulty of the test to ensure high graduation rates.

This trend is certainly nothing new. What particularly struck me was this paragraph: “Critics of Arkansas’s [exit exam] system say it fails to show true math proficiency because students have only to score 24 out of 100 to pass the test and those who fail will be granted two additional chances to take the test. After that, they can take a computerized tutorial that is followed by a test.” Our standard for graduating seniors is less than one in four correct on content from Algebra I.

Where are the politicians and education leaders when the discussion of a knowledge-based economy comes up? Economists, labor leaders and corporate heads have all identified the most significant paradigm shift in centuries. Education is not just a hobby for the bourgeoisie; it is a prerequisite for every single citizen of this country to find a basic job to put food on the table.

We need to radically reconsider our notions of what an education is if we are to thrive–nay, survive–in the 21st century. We have lowered our expectations, lowered our bars and lowered our standards to the point where the goal of high schools in America is getting students to count and read a sentence, and yet, we still can only push three out of four to a diploma. That is a humiliating disgrace for a nation that prides itself on the advanced state of its science and technology.

If you believe the leaders of our states, the solution to this situation is to cut funding to education. To a certain degree, I do not blame them.  It is hard to imagine a system that could so clearly fail as much as education and yet continue to be handed funding. Nonetheless, it is a painfully short-term decision, made by politicians who will be out of office before their damage is realized.

To reform education, politicians must reduce the power of three groups: teachers unions, supporters of teachers colleges and hovercraft parents. Teachers unions, more than any other force, are killing American education. New York Public Schools are forced to retain teachers who abuse children and fail to teach their subject in a special Rubber Room because of their union contracts. Education is not about the teachers; it is about the students. Bad teachers should be fired. Period.

We need to vastly reform teacher colleges and the licensing system. Teachers need to learn their future subjects, not learn the psychology of teaching. Instead, schools should offer mentoring opportunities and better on-the-job training for new teachers while also encouraging further study in their academic discipline. This system will also open the door to students who never considered teaching, but may be open to pursuing it as a career.

The final group that needs to be targeted are hovercraft parents. When a son or daughter comes home with a bad grade, parents swoop in and demand gold stars to make them feel good. They then go to the polls and ensure that politicians who are elected share their mindset. These are the same parents attempting to eliminate homework because it takes away from sports practice. We need to demand more, not less, of our students.

Reducing the power of these three groups will not be easy, but to create these higher standards, every one of them will need to be involved. They need to agree to a set of common standards that every high school senior should know. And then they need to test to those standards and hold the line.

What can we do? Talk about your experience and passion for learning to every young person in your family and encourage them to seek out the very best education they can find. Fight against apathy, anti-intellectualism and the rugged individual notion that education does not matter. When someone tells you, “Oh, math is not really my thing,” respond back, “And working at McDonald’s isn’t mine.”

I am not willing to hear that students in America are incapable of handling a harder workload and more advanced coursework. These critics are wrong and I do not believe them. I believe in programs like KIPP, in which even the most unprepared students have been developed and sent to college. We need to raise standards throughout our country and hold them there. Our future depends on it.

Roman, Byzantine, British. These are among the great empires of European history, the groups that influenced the development of entire centuries of human existence. Despite all of their glories and riches, they eventually receded from prominence, their power waning in a long struggle against decline. The question of this decade, and indeed so far this century, is a simple one: will America be added to that list of former powers?

Ask that question to an American today and the response will likely be “yes,” according to a recent Rasmussen poll. The zeitgeist of the past two years has been clear, they say, and their response has been equally strong and focused. The Tea Party movement is a direct consequence of that belief in America’s decline, a demand to look in the rearview mirror to the ‘50s, ‘80s and ‘90s and search for the soul of a nation that was once ebullient and prosperous.

Who, then, is to blame? The future seems to be a tremendously frustrating and depressing venture. The economy I see is undergoing creative destruction, but the emphasis so far has tilted heavily toward destruction. Entire industries have been forced aside, while nascent industries have failed to take hold. It is not a pretty sight.

In the past, graduating college meant entering a world of opportunity and growth. The humanities were flourishing, science and technology were seeing tremendous growth, the social sciences were experiencing fundamental advances and businesses the world over were experiencing flush profits. American dynamism was exhilarating.

Today, few members of my generation will stay with one employer throughout their lifetimes. In lieu of stable employment and some semblance of a social safety net, workers face a nightmarish environment of temporary assignments, pink slips and eroding wages.

Even getting an advanced degree does not insulate graduates from the vagaries of the market. Law schools are still opening, despite the reality that there are 50 percent more law graduates every year than the market can sustain. Wages for lawyers can barely match loan repayment demands. The answer is similar in medical school, where debt loads are larger than the upper quartile of home mortgages.

For graduate school, the answer is worse. A Ph.D. used to mean all but guaranteed employment at a university or in industry. Today, graduate students in fields as diverse as English, biology and political science cannot even find a stable position that pays better than their graduate stipends (a problem existing well before the economic downturn).

If employment and the economy were the only problems facing America, a little bit of can-do spirit and some creativity may have eliminated the problem. Unfortunately, it is not the only problem, nor is it the primary problem.

Our generation faces a punishing array of issues: enormous national debt, underfunded Social Security, exorbitant health costs, crumbling infrastructure, failing schools, worsening inequality and poor job prospects, among a host of other ills. Frustratingly, politicians continue to dither about what problems to solve or whether to solve them at all. One generation simply cannot shoulder this burden, not with the environment we face.

I understand the Tea Partiers. Our current situation is pretty damning. However, it can be easy to look at the trends of the world today and conclude that America’s time has passed. It most certainly has not. We are too dynamic, innovative and entrepreneurial to allow that to happen so quickly.

But our resurgence can be endangered. The current anti-government (indeed, anti-everything) response from Tea Partiers is starting to reverse America’s strength. Lowering taxes has been a classic American political virtue, but it is deadly in a time of reinvestment. How can one prepare the current and the next generation for the world they face when schools and colleges are getting less funding every year?

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently recognized this in his State of the State address, saying, “Spending 45 percent more on prisons than universities is no way to proceed into the future. What does it say about a state that focuses more on prison uniforms than caps and gowns? It simply is not healthy.” Too bad that he is a lame duck with little political capital left to spend.

If America is to remain strong in the 21st century, then this country must invest resources to sustain its power. That means upgrading infrastructure, raising education standards, demanding school choice, controlling health care costs and engaging our allies and enemies. The answer to our problems lies not with the past, but with our future. The Romans, Byzantines and British looked to the past and began a process of malaise and decline. America cannot live life in the rearview mirror.

Introspection is an important trait, but how can one write an obituary for the past decade? The typical lament that comes with eulogizing the end of something dear tends to be positive, but really, the first 10 years of the new millennia was a real loser in the span of American history.

So, instead of looking backward at the hellish morass we just discarded, I am seizing the opportunity to play Miss Cleo and identify the top 10 news stories of the coming decade. Events abound–a couple more presidential elections, another season of American Idol, the end of the world perhaps. The true stories of change in the coming decade are going to be subtler, but far more important.

In higher education, the tuition bubble of the past two decades will crash, beginning a second wave of realignments across universities. In the process, the core mission of universities will become more specialized as unpopular programs and tenure lines are cut. Long term, a renaissance of higher education is in order, focusing on more interdisciplinary skills and higher standards.

Students entering universities will be better prepared than their predecessors due to the new K-12 Core Standards currently close to implementation. As teachers begin to teach math and science skills again in American public schools, the country will note a general improvement in international test scores and an influx of new STEM majors in universities.

Those STEM majors will continue developing automated systems that replace humans in more and more industries. First it was the cashiers at Wal-Mart, but soon it will be your local lawyer. The bread-and-butter cases of law are simple matters–trusts, wills and estates–that will slowly be replaced with intelligent computer programs that can write legitimate–and legal–text. This change, coupled with the opening of additional law schools, will lead to a major glut in lawyers that could make law school quite unattractive for all but the best students.

In California politics, the state will reach an untenable level of dysfunction, driving up support for a new constitution. Whether the constitution is replaced or significantly revised remains an open question, but it will be a good bet that direct democracy provisions will be curtailed.

Dysfunction will also come to a head at the national level, where the U.S. Senate will vote to end the filibuster, either replacing it with one more sane and robust or eliminating it completely. As legislation from both parties continues to be stopped by the minority faction, the Senate will be left with little choice but to change the current system or risk a severe response at the ballot box.

The rancorous partisanship and extreme positions of both parties leaves a gaping hole in the moderate middle, and I believe a small but influential third party will fill that hole. That party will begin at the state level, but will pick off just enough seats in the House to be the balance of power. If history is any suitable indication, it will not last long, but will be a spark for change in its brief existence.

The major issues facing the legislature will continue to be jobs and the economy for the foreseeable future. Structural unemployment–incongruity between the skills of job-seekers and the skills needed by employers–is the central issue. While it will take most of the decade to transfer people from dying to growth industries, America will reach a strong level of economic competitiveness by 2020.

At the international level, the biggest story of the next decade will be the climax to the Taiwan question, which will finally be answered (what way is unclear). The forces pulling Taiwan into the mainland’s orbit and the reactionary forces that will attempt to stop it are gathering in strength. The battle of the two sides will be surprisingly swift and final.

Despite the prominence of Copenhagen, climate change will not be the primary motivator of international discussion next decade. Instead, tightening supplies of oil will be the crisis of the moment. Whether peak oil has happened or will shortly, supply will never match the growth in demand from developing countries. As the world responds to this new energy situation, it will largely eliminate the climate problems in the process.

Finally, despite that new California constitution, the legislature will finally eliminate UC-Berkeley from its budget. Maybe it is my inner Stanford talking, but I just cannot see that other Bay Area institution making it through another decade.

The 2010s may not be rosy, but it will be a vast improvement over the one we have just finished. A decade of renewal is also a decade of dynamism, and the changes that are wrought will strengthen the nation and the world.