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Some educators have come to the conclusion that China’s outstanding academic success, as indicated by test scores, may be what is holding it back. Now, China is searching for better education models elsewhere. Although the government does not publicly endorse American education as the model, the public seems eager to embrace what is viewed as a more liberal and creative system—ironically, at a time when many in the United States are gazing enviously at the discipline and order of the Chinese system, and the No Child Left Behind Act has brought a new focus on testing.

For thousands of years, dynasties of emperors (with a few exceptions) followed the Confucian tradition of conformity, hierarchy, and respect for authority, and the Communist government continued this tradition by seeking to maintain control over all aspects of life. The result has been a highly disciplined but docile workforce. Fostering creativity suggests freedom, and though that prospect can be glimpsed in education reforms, the reality may still lie someway off.

Do you remember those days?  Well, they are gone. Over the last 30 years, the dominant American firms have gone global.  Thirty years ago, they weighed in on American education policy because they were scared to death that they would be unable to compete because they would not be able to hire a competitive work force.  Now, they care as much as ever about getting a competitive work force, but they have learned that they can find the people they need at whatever skill level they require all over the globe, and often in greater quantity and at less cost than they can get them in the United States.  If they can't get what they need for their research and development labs or their distribution centers or their factories here in the United States, they can get them in Singapore or India or China or Hungary.

They tend to be deep believers in "disruptive change."  They typically distrust government and the "system," and adopt a rather libertarian outlook.  Rather than work within the education system, they tend to support people and entities that work outside the system or work hard to challenge it.  They distrust education professionals and prefer instead to trust young, bright, well-educated people who are willing to take the system on.  In short, they identify with and give their support to people like themselves.  They are big backers of individual charter management organizations and of policies that would strengthen charter schools, which they see as taking on the system.  It is very doubtful whether the charter school movement would have gotten away from the starting gate without these deep pocketed, very committed supporters.

I very much hope that, as the new generation of business leaders that has provided so much support to charters and other entrepreneurial efforts in education take pride in their successes, they also recognize the limitations of those efforts, and turn their talents and their influence to another, much more difficult challenge:  How to greatly improve the system that educates all the children in this country.

Historically, when the nation has a cold, schools sneeze. Examples are legion. When the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik in 1957, President Eisenhower signed the National Defense Education Act (1958) aimed at getting better math and science teachers National problems of drug and alcohol abuse and tobacco smoking has led to states mandating courses to teach children and youth about the dangers of all of these substances. The Civil Rights movement in the 1950′s and 1960s’s spilled over the schools across the nation. Christian groups have pressured school boards to have prayer in schools, teach creationism, and vouchers (Educational Policy-2004-Lugg-169-87). The U.S. has competed economically with European and Asian countries for markets in the 1890s and since the 1980s. Each time that has occurred, business leaders turned to the schools to produce skilled graduates then for industrial jobs and now for an information-based economy.

This vulnerability to political stakeholders is very clear now with business and civic leaders pushing schools to be more efficient and effective in competing with China, Japan, and Germany.

In big cities where the problem of bad schooling is worst, results-driven reformers want mayors to take over schools and appoint their own superintendents, individuals who will accept no excuses from teachers and principals, will fight union rules, raise test scores, and create more charter schools.