In order to address the essential question — What Is The Public Education That Will Sustain An Ever More Successful America? — there needs to be some imagining:

1. What does a successful America look like in the future?
2. What are the qualities citizens must possess in order to sustain an ever more successful America?
3. What is the system of public education that has the best chance to produce those qualities?

For all of the sound and fury concerning the system of American public education, there seems little effort to define system aim / purpose / mission of the system.

A vision of a successful America in the future should be what directs discussions about public education. It would make a wonderful seminar discussion to flesh out, with practical examples, what a successful America in the future might look like.

I find it disturbing that President Obama and his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, define the mission of American public education almost exclusively in economic terms. Obama, for example, says, “Our future is on the line. Giving our kids the best education is an economic imperative.” And Duncan says, “Nothing — nothing is more important in the long-run to American prosperity than boosting the skills and attainment of the nation’s students.”

The mission of America is one that transcends prosperity. I agree that a successful America in the future will enjoy increased prosperity. But widely spread prosperity, I believe, will come as a byproduct of a successful democracy. Every totalitarian state, I’m sure, wants to produce a “competitive work force” that will secure an economic advantage over other nations. But, according to its historical mission, reflected in the pledge of allegiance we commonly repeat, America wants much more. America wants “liberty and justice for all.”

Unfortunately, it is the oligarchy’s POV concerning American education that frames the discussion. So we are told education is an economic imperative vital to our future prosperity and that it should center of Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) education. We are fed propaganda that increasing test scores by 5% will result in a $41 trillion windfall.

As I note in “Just Singing A Song Won’t Change The World,” since I started to keep a web log, I find myself coming back to the central POV I started with — “Democracy is the Answer.” Name a problem — more democracy is the answer:

• Raising America’s standard of living — more democracy is the answer.
• Transforming our system of public education — more democracy is the answer.
• World peace — more democracy is the answer.

Here are my answers to the first two of the three questions I posed at the beginning of this post:

1. A foundational requirement for a successful America in the future, I believe, is that it operates as a vigorous representative democracy, with a government that is of the people, by the people and for the people. Any future where there is an optimal outcome for America requires that our democracy operate effectively. What does a successful America look like in the future? A vigorous democracy.
2. In order to get to that future, the mission of the American system of public education, it follows, must be to develop within American citizens the capacity and inclination to fully participate in their democracy. The qualities in students education should seek to develop are those qualities needed for effective citizenship.

The oligarchy, of course, defines the mission of education as preparing workers for world class competition, and says education is all about STEM. If there could arise a consensus that the mission of public education is to develop citizens, not workers, the importance of STEM education would fade and a whole different set of educational goals and objectives would be pursued.

The point is, if we define the mission of education as developing individual potential and structure public education to develop the capacities of individuals needed for effective citizenship — thoughtfulness, independence, knowledge, intellectual confidence, curiosity, empathy, ability to communicate and work in groups, etc. — economic growth will occur as a natural byproduct of individual initiative and entrepreneurship.  Citizens ready to give leadership to strengthening democracy will be ready to give leadership to strengthening the economy as well.

The question I posed — What Is The Public Education That Will Sustain An Ever More Successful America? –– is a system question. Every system is focused on achieving an aim and achieving an aim is what drives a system. I am suggesting that the aim of public education, broadly speaking, should be all about developing effective citizenship.

Previously I suggested that the aim of education is to give every citizen effective opportunity. I asked, “If The Aim Of Public Education Is To Provide Opportunity — How Should $150,000 Per Student Be Spent?”

The POV I am coming to is that although providing individual opportunity is an important mission, it is embedded in a bigger mission. A more comprehensive question that might serve as a good thought question is: “If The Aim Of Public Education Is To Develop Effective Citizens — How Should $150,000 Per Student Be Spent?”

Last night on ABC News, David Muir made a truly whopping claim. With a straight face he reported that, according to a Stanford study, “a 5% increase in American test scores would translate into a $41 trillion increase in the American economy in the next 20 years.”

Wow.  Let that idea sink in.  It’s amazing propaganda. As I’ve previously concluded: The idea that the focus of our system of public education should be to maintain and improve the American standard of living is an idea so often expressed, we don’t recognize it as propaganda.

The study Muir referred to — “The High Cost of Low Educational Performance: THE LONG-RUN ECONOMIC IMPACT OF IMPROVING PISA OUTCOMES” — as it turns out, is not nearly so confident about a test score / economic growth causation as ABC News would have its viewers believe.

The study offers “five approaches” to argue test score / economic growth causation.  But, significantly, the report admits:  “none of the approaches addresses all of the important issues. Each approach fails to be conclusive for easily identified reasons. However, the combination of approaches, with similar support for the underlying growth models, provides some assurance that the most obvious problematic issues are not driving the results.”

“Some assurance” in its conclusion, is a far reach from the confidence about the study’s conclusion that ABC News projected last night.  “Some assurance” suggests, maybe, a 20% possibility, not a 100% certainty reported by ABC News.

The study centers around results from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests of 15 year olds from around the globe. Last night ABC news reported the latest PISA results:  “The U.S. now ranks 25th in math, 17th in science, and 14th in reading out of the 34 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.”

Diane Sawyer said the report was a “wake-up call.”  David Muir said the numbers were “stunning,” and quoted President Obama as saying, “this is our Sputnik moment,” and showed a video clip of John Kennedy during the 1960 presidential campaign speaking with alarm concerning the Soviets’ space breakthrough.

Muir, in the context of this PISA report, gave an amazing interpretation of history — “Money was poured into math and science and 10 years later we put a man on the moon” — implying that a ten year effort to improve high school math and science resulted in our moon shot!  This is breathtaking propaganda — deliberate misinformation.  The actions that actually succeeded in bringing the space program together had zero to do with efforts to improve high school education from 1960 to July 20, 1969.

Then, Muir repeated the impossible notion that that a 5%  increase in American test scores would translate into a $41 trillion increase in the American economy in the next 20 years. “Just a 5% increase,” Muir said to Diane Sawyer, who replied, evidently referring to the notion that improved high school education led to the 1969 moon walk, “We did it before and we can do it again.” (Hear the message: just like in the 1960’s, when we responded to the Sputnik challenge by gearing up our math and science education, we now need to respond to the current economic challenge by gearing up our math and science education.  If how to gain $41 trillion in 20 years is the question, then achieving greater educational rigor is the answer.)

The notion that a 5% increase in student test performance will translate, over 20 years, into $41 trillion increase in the economy is a truly stunning claim.  The statistical analysis needed to justify such a conclusion is very much debatable. The study identifies the key issue: “Work on cross-country growth analysis has been plagued by legitimate questions about whether any truly causal effects have been identified, or alternatively whether the estimated statistical analyses simply pick up a correlation without causal meaning.”

Here is an abbreviated version of the “five approaches” that together, according to the report, give “some assurance” of causation:

• First, this estimated relationship is little affected by including other possible determinants of economic growth. …
• Second, to tackle the most obvious reverse-causality issues, Hanushek and Woessmann (2009) separate the timing of the analysis by estimating the effect of scores on tests conducted until the early 1980s on economic growth in 1980-2000. …
• Third, the analysis traces the impact on growth of just the variations in achievement that arise from institutional characteristics of each country’s school system (exit examinations, autonomy, and private schooling). This estimated impact is essentially the same as previously reported, lending support both to the causal impact of more cognitive skills and to the conclusion that schooling policies can have direct economic returns. …
• Fourth, one major concern is that countries with good economies also have good school systems – implying that those that grow faster because of the basic economic factors also have high achievement. To deal with this, immigrants to the United States who have been educated in their home countries are compared to those who were educated in the United States. … Looking at labour-market returns, the cognitive skills seen in the immigrant’s home country lead to higher incomes – but only if the immigrant was educated at home. Immigrants from the same home country schooled in the United States see no economic return to home- country quality, thus pinpointing the value of better schools.
• Fifth, perhaps the toughest test of causality is reliance on how changes in test scores over time lead to changes in growth rates. This approach eliminates country-specific economic and cultural factors. Figure 8 (see below) simply plots trends in educational performance and trends in growth rates over time for OECD countries.25 This investigation provides more evidence of the causal influence of cognitive skills. The gains in test scores over time are related to the gains in growth rates over time.  As with the other approaches, this analysis must presume that the pattern of achievement changes has been occurring over a long time, because it is not the achievement of school children but the skills of workers that count. Nonetheless, the consistency of the patterns and the similarities of magnitudes of the estimates to the basic growth models is striking (see Hanushek and Woessmann, 2009).

Economist Joseph Stiglitz in an article in The Guardian, says, “It’s possible to cut the US deficit in a growth-friendly way that reduces inequality. But certain powerful groups won’t like it.”

He says that new austerity strategies now being championed, “will almost surely lead to weaker national and global economies and a marked slowdown in the pace of recovery.” He says, “Those hoping for large deficit reductions will be sorely disappointed, as the economic slowdown will push down tax revenues and increase demands for unemployment insurance and other social benefits.”

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Stiglitz says that the deficit-reduction agenda in the U.S., “is an attempt to weaken social protections, reduce the progressivity of the tax system, and shrink the role and size of government – all while leaving established interests, such as the military-industrial complex, as little affected as possible.”

The plan Stiglitz proposes would curb corporate welfare and would increase tax rates on the wealthy. About his deficit-reduction package, Stiglitz says: “lt would more than meet even the most ardent deficit hawk’s demands. It would increase efficiency, promote growth, improve the environment and benefit workers and the middle class.”

But he is not optimistic that such a sensible plan would ever be enacted because, “It wouldn’t benefit those at the top, or the corporate and other special interests that have come to dominate America’s policymaking.” Here is Stiglitz’s plan:

First, spending on high-return public investments should be increased. Even if there are emergency loans options available, this widens the deficit in the short run, it will reduce the national debt in the long run. What business wouldn’t jump at investment opportunities yielding returns in excess of 10% if it could borrow capital – as the US government can – for less than 3% interest?

Second, military expenditures must be cut – not just funding for the fruitless wars, but also for the weapons that don’t work against enemies that don’t exist. The US has continued as if the cold war never came to an end, spending nearly as much on defence as the rest of the world combined.

Third, corporate welfare must be ended. Even as America has stripped away its safety net for people, it has strengthened the safety net for firms.

• Corporate welfare accounts for nearly 50% of total income in some parts of US agro-business, with billions of dollars in cotton subsidies, for example, going to a few rich farmers, while lowering prices and increasing poverty among competitors in the developing world.
• An especially egregious form of corporate special treatment is that afforded to the drug companies. Even though the US government is the largest buyer of their products, it is not allowed to negotiate prices, thereby fuelling an estimated increase in corporate revenues – and costs to the government – approaching $1tn dollars over a decade.
• Another example is the smorgasbord of special benefits provided to the energy sector, especially oil and gas, thereby simultaneously robbing the treasury, distorting resource allocation and destroying the environment.
• Then there are the seemingly endless giveaways of national resources – from the free spectrum provided to broadcasters to the low royalties levied on mining companies to the subsidies to lumber companies.

Fourth, create a fairer and more efficient tax system.

• Eliminate the special treatment of capital gains and dividends. Why should those who work for a living be subject to higher tax rates than those who reap their livelihood from speculation (often at the expense of others)?
• Increase tax on the wealthy. With more than 20% of all income going to the top 1%, a slight increase, say 5%, in taxes actually paid would bring in more than $1 trillon over the course of a decade.