If business leaders don’t already worry enough about the link between education and the economy, the recent report by the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce is sure to add to their angst. Titled Tough Choices or Tough Times, it warns that the U.S. faces the threat of a declining standard of living and social instability unless steps are immediately taken to prepare students for the demands of the global marketplace. If its recommendations are implemented, even those schools widely considered paradigms of excellence will be candidates for a radical redesign that could render them virtually unrecognizable.   

The panel’s suggestions include schools run by independent contractors, funding controlled by states, mandatory state exit exams, universal preschool, and teacher salaries linked to performance and willingness to serve in hard-to-staff schools. The commission maintains that these proposals can be paid for by the estimated $67 billion in savings that will result from their adoption.

If a connection exists between test scores and economic prosperity, it most certainly wasn’t evident in the past decade. Yet the same argument is once again being made in the name of global competitiveness.

Alarmism about public schools began in the wake of World War II. Concerned that the Russians were producing nearly twice as many engineers, scientists and mathematicians as the U.S., former CIA director Allen Dulles tried to convince Congress that winning the Cold War would depend on the ability of the nation’s colleges and universities to turn out the necessary manpower. When higher education responded that it was itself hard-pressed to find qualified candidates, the stage was set for a frontal attack on public schools. The launching of Sputnik in October 1957 by the Soviets provided the impetus for the indictment. The only trouble with this blame-the-schools argument, however, was that those working on America’s rockets were well into their careers and were not educated in the U.S. They consisted largely of former Nazi scientists. The Soviets, too, were relying on German experts for their scientific expertise, not on homegrown talent.

Despite this inconvenient fact, attacks on public schools continued. The cover of the March 24, 1958 issue of Life Magazine, for example, showed side-by-side photos of two high school juniors: a dour Alexei Kutzkov in Moscow and a smiling Stephen Lapekas in Chicago. Their demeanors were meant to symbolize their respective countries’ contrasting state of education. The feature story showed the Russian engaging in complicated physics experiments and reading aloud from “Sister Carrie” in his English class, while the American was pictured rehearsing for the school’s musical play and walking his girlfriend home after school. Depicting competing educational systems this simplistic way was an easy sell to a gullible public, and emboldened critics.

It was not until April 1983, however, when “A Nation At Risk” was released by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, that the campaign took on an ominous tone. On its first page, the widely-publicized report claimed that America’s “once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world.” It went on to lay the blame squarely on the anemic performance of schools that was reflected in both longitudinal and comparative studies. The report warned that Japan would overtake and bury the U.S. It based its bleak prediction on internationally standardized tests that ranked Japanese students ahead of their American counterparts. But this test-score thesis failed to pass muster when Japan’s economy tanked in 1990. Starting in 1991, the U.S. entered the longest period of economic prosperity in its history.

If a connection exists between test scores and economic prosperity, it most certainly wasn’t evident in the past decade. Yet the same argument is once again being made in the name of global competitiveness. Despite the great intuitive appeal of the argument, it’s hard to believe that paper-and-pencil tests are nearly as important as the recent report asserts.

For one thing, standardized tests only measure cognitive traits. Values and attitudes, for example, are no less worthy of measurement than traditional knowledge and skills. The Japan Times, for example, lamented the price paid by students as a result of relentless academic competition in a recent editorial, which it titled “Molding children by design.”

It’s more than mere coincidence that at a time when the U.S. is being urged to emulate the supposedly superior curricula and instruction of other countries, these same countries are belatedly attempting to adopt ours.

The strength of American schools in this area matches a weakness of schools abroad. There’s a saying in Japanese education that “the nail that stands out gets hammered down.” This is the antithesis of American education, with its emphasis on individuality, questioning, and sense of adventure. So while Asian students consistently best our students on standardized tests, the ultimate effect on the economy is virtually nil. The Minister of Education of Singapore has argued that his country has an exam meritocracy that propels its students into the top position in science and math rankings, while the U.S. has a talent meritocracy that shows up in the large numbers of its students who become entrepreneurs.

It’s more than mere coincidence, therefore, that at a time when the U.S. is being urged to emulate the supposedly superior curricula and instruction of other countries, these same countries are belatedly attempting to adopt ours. Japan, Korea and Singapore, the technological titans, are prodding their schools away from the rote memorization that has long characterized their educational systems to a strategy that emphasizes America’s creativity and critical thinking. They have good reason to do so. The U.S. leads the world in the number of patents granted, peer-reviewed articles published and Nobel Prizes awarded. Schools here must have something to do with this record.

But try telling that to the New Commission, which undermines its own case by focusing solely on public schools. If its goal is only to educate American students for the new global economy, why is no mention made in its report of the need to overhaul private and religious schools? After all, they educate some 5 million students, or about 10 percent of the total student population. Those graduates will also be part of this country’s workforce, competing in the same international marketplace. The usual argument made in the past for their exclusion is their alleged academic superiority. Since they are exempt from taking the same standardized tests as public schools, however, we can’t be sure that they don’t need help.

The reality is that American public schools vary in range from excellent to execrable. It is the latter group that constitutes a direct threat to the nation’s prosperity. Yet “Tough Choices or Tough Times” makes no attempt to differentiate. Instead, the study engages in mass condemnation in the hope of undermining confidence in a system that has attempted to educate more students for longer periods than any other in the world. Before adopting drastic proposals wholesale, we better be certain that we’re not buying into a grand scheme that will throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Walt Gardner taught for 28 years in the Los Angeles Unified School District and has lectured in the UCLA Graduate School of Education.