Unit 1: The Educational Challenge

Most educators judge how well schools are doing by comparing how schools are performing now to how they used to perform. But fundamental changes in technology and the global economy make those comparisons irrelevant. A very large fraction—probably a majority—of students who now graduate from American high schools with the same skills that their predecessors had—skills that enabled twentieth-century adults to make a good middle class living—will not make enough to lift them out of a life of economic struggle. Whereas the American workforce used to be among the best educated in the industrialized world, it is now among the worst educated. The implications for the United States are ominous unless our schools find a way to produce much better educated graduates at no increase in cost.

The purpose of this unit is to enable you to grasp the full extent of this challenge and to understand its causes and likely consequences. The NISL program is designed not to prepare school leaders for the realities faced by our parents but to prepare them to deal with a very different—and far more demanding—future. It is to prepare school leaders who can be key participants in redesigning our schools so they can rise to challenges the United States now faces and prepare students who can succeed and indeed thrive in that future. This unit will be successful if participants finish it with a burning sense of urgency.

Looking at the world through the lens of the economic analysis that we will present will make you look at your own world with new eyes. You will see that our whole education system is organized to use the standard bell performance curve to sort students into bins that would enable them to fit into the kind of economy the United States had at the turn of the last century. You will see that that will not work anymore, because that economy is gone. What the countries with the most successful education systems now see, for reasons that we will explain, is that those countries that will succeed in the future must now provide to virtually all their students a kind and quality of education that they used to provide for only a small, elite group of students.

That requires a highly capable, very knowledgeable corps of teachers, working in schools that provide the kind of professional work environment that high status professionals enjoy all over the world. This implies schools that are organized, managed, and led very differently than the typical American school. This unit will explain why that is so, what that means in the countries that have been going down that road, and what it will mean for U.S. school leaders. This unit will provide both a framework and a rationale for the whole NISL program.

For more than a quarter century, NCEE has been researching the key strategies used by the countries, states, and provinces that have been most successful in building education systems that are responsive to the challenges described above. NCEE has identified these strategies as the 9 Building Blocks for a World-Class Education System (2015):

1. Provide strong supports for children and their families before students arrive at school.
2. Provide more resources for at-risk students than for others.
3. Develop world-class, highly coherent instructional systems.
4. Create clear gateways for students through the system, set to global standards, with no dead ends.
5. Assure an abundant supply of highly qualified teachers.
6. Redesign schools to be places in which teachers will be treated as professionals, with incentives and support to continuously improve their professional practice and the performance of their students.
7. Create an effective system of career and technical education and training.
8. Create a leadership development system that develops leaders at all levels to manage such systems effectively.
9. Institute a governance system that has the authority and legitimacy to develop coherent, powerful policies and is capable of implementing them at scale.

Some of these building blocks, as important as they might be, are beyond the control of most school leaders. This is particularly true of supports provided to young children and their families, including early childhood education, the allocation of resources among communities and schools, and issues related to the system’s governance. But much of the agenda of the top performers falls within the scope of responsibilities of most school leaders.

Three of the building blocks lie at the core of the strategies used by the top performers:

• Build the strongest possible instructional system (defined as the student performance standards, curriculum frameworks, course syllabi, instructional materials, and formative and summative assessments from which a highly aligned, powerful, and coherent instructional system is constructed).
• Engage the highly competent faculty to teach that curriculum. (People who have deep command of the subjects they teach, are masters of their craft, and are deeply committed to their students.)
• Provide that faculty with a highly professional work environment, an environment that provides the incentives and support that will enable them to do their best work and to become ever more competent at it.

The principal who can implement the building blocks well will have a high-performing school. That principal will be

• a leader capable of creating a vision of what is possible that will fire teachers’ imaginations and drive their work;
• a system redesigner capable not just of creating new initiatives, but of developing whole new systems that will provide the structures, supports, and incentives needed to realize the vision;
• a strategist capable of developing the strategies to translate the vision into implemented reality, building the support for and diminishing the resistance to the measures needed to take the vision to reality.

We aim to provide you with a firm grasp of the practices that will make your school effective in this new environment along with an introduction to the theoretical and conceptual foundations of those practices. Through case studies, games, videos of international experts, advanced interactive instructional programs, technical tools, a global resource bank, and robust global networks of colleagues, you will be actively engaged in learning how to lead your school in the redesign of its instructional system, organization, and management systems. You will also learn how to develop new incentives and supports for your faculty.

And we will give you the tools you will need to craft effective strategies for developing and selling your vision, creating a plan to realize it, and implementing your plan successfully. Throughout, we will help you to be more reflective about your own strengths and weaknesses as a leader, helping you to build on your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.

• The United States led the world in schooling between the middle of the nineteenth century and the 1970s. Since then, a swiftly increasing number of nations have been outperforming us on PISA and other international comparative measures. The result is that we have gone from having the best-educated workforce in the world to one of the worst. That poses a vital threat not only to our economy but also to our society and our political system. Our schools must be redesigned for a world utterly different from the world for which our system was created. School leaders must be in the vanguard of that effort.
• For more than a century, students graduating from American high schools with the basic skills could be ensured a comfortable middle class life. Now, students graduating with exactly the same skills can expect a lifetime of economic struggle. The United States must 1) figure out how to produce a nation of high school graduates educated to the same standards that we have only educated our elite students to in the past, and 2) do it without spending any more money than we have been spending up to now. That is just what the countries with the most effective systems have been learning how to do.
• Up to now, the typical American objective has been to educate all students “up to their potential.” But we have assumed that that potential has been distributed on a bell-shaped curve. So what we have really meant is that the schools’ job is to sort our students on a bell-shaped curve. Our whole system is designed to do that. The antithesis of that is to educate all students to an explicit high, internationally benchmarked standard. Doing that requires changing almost all of the conventions of the American schooling system.
• School leaders cannot change the whole system. But they can change many of the most important things. According to the best research on the countries with the most successful education systems, two things matter the most: what is taught and measured (the instructional system) and how well it is taught (the quality of the teachers and degree to which the school is organized as a professional workplace).
• The best research shows that students will perform at very high levels if 1) expectations are high for all students; 2) all students are exposed to a demanding, well-conceived curriculum; 3) assessments are designed to measure the full range of higher-order thinking skills and other cognitive and non-cognitive qualities now demanded of adults; and 4) teachers have a deep, conceptually grounded command of their subjects and work in an environment characteristic of the best professional workplaces globally (including the incentives to get better at their work, every day, week, and year).
• The whole school must operate as the antithesis of a sorting system. The entire faculty must share the assumption that all but the most severely handicapped students can and must achieve at internationally benchmarked levels, and no stone will be left unturned to make that happen.
• The engine of school improvement is not located outside the school; it is located inside the school. It is the school’s faculty. The most effective way to move forward is to identify the most effective teachers and give them the opportunity to lead their colleagues to a more effective school.

The school leader’s job is to work with the faculty to 1) identify the key opportunities for improving instruction, 2) organize teachers in teams to research the best practices in the world, 3) come up with a plan based on that research, 4) implement the plan as a team, 5) evaluate its effectiveness, and then 6) improve on it. This will require teachers to work together to design solutions, observe teachers demonstrating the improved approaches, and critique them to make them better. It will require teachers to be in each other’s classrooms all the time, learning from one another. And it will involve a big investment of time on the part of the best teachers in mentoring new teachers and others. The message has to be: No matter how good you are, you can be even better, and, if you are very good, you have an obligation to share your expertise with your colleagues.

• High standards for all students (benchmarked to those of high-performing countries), strategic thinking about how to reach them, and an unrelenting focus on results
• Access to a first-class curriculum and an aligned assessment system that both reflects the high academic standards and constitutes the main resource for achieving them
• Teachers with the knowledge and skills needed to teach the curriculum well to the students in their school
• A professional work environment that provides the faculty with strong incentives to do even better and the commitment, operational disciplines, shared leadership, and continual monitoring of student achievement data to improve their own knowledge
• A new school organization and management system designed to facilitate and support these features
• At the high school level, all graduates of the 10th grade ready to go on to succeed in an upper division program made up of courses set at the demand level of AP or IB or ready to succeed in the first year of a typical community college program
• At the elementary and middle school levels, all students leaving ready to succeed in a program that will enable them to be successful in a school program leading to the kind of high school just described

The NISL program helps you develop the knowledge and skills you need to realize the vision we just shared with you, as follows:

• Strategy in Support of Vision—how to a develop comprehensive strategies that will enable you to realize your vision for a school that responds to today’s economic realities
• Aligned Instructional Systems for College and Career Readiness—how to develop a high-quality instructional system that will get all students ready to succeed in college and in a career—in fact, not just as a slogan
• High-Quality Teachers and Teaching—how to rigorously recruit, select and develop highly qualified teachers in order to deliver the kind and quality of instruction formerly reserved for the elite to all students
• High-Performance Organization and Management—how to organize and manage your school to motivate and enable first-rate teachers to do their best work
• Decision Systems for Resource Equity—how to take advantage of the best thinking from business and the military to make good decisions in real time in order to ensure equitable access to opportunities for learning for all students
• Stakeholder Engagement—how to make sure your faculty and the community work together to implement new system designs for improving student performance

• Student of Learning—You will not be able to develop students who are good learners unless you and your faculty understand the most current research about how people learn.
• Strategic Thinker—Great ideas have impact only by connecting your vision to strategic decisions and actions for enacting them.
• Advocate for Change—Great ideas will not make any difference if you cannot get others to buy in and follow the lead.
• Builder of Teams—You cannot do it alone. You need to build an effective cohort of team leaders within your school.
• Creator of Learning Culture—You need to build a successful school culture. You do not need a staff of reluctant back-stabbers; you need a team ready to do whatever it takes to succeed.
• Ethical Decision Maker—Building a successful school is not just a job for technicians. Moral leadership is key.
• Communicator—You cannot expect others to follow if you cannot communicate. You must be an effective communicator to all stakeholders.
• Driver of Equitable Results—Great school leaders know that “all means all” all students can achieve at high levels with the right supports and do what it takes to get results that benefit all students equally.

• Explain why changes in the world economy have dramatically reduced the need for low-skilled workers and increased the need for high-skilled workers who meet high academic standards and have complex skills in high-wage countries.
• Communicate a sense of urgency about the consequences of failing to reverse the slide in the quality of the American workforce in terms that the people in your community can understand. Have the information needed to convince your faculty and community that the need to provide all students with the quality of education once provided only to “gifted” students is of the utmost importance, and—no less important—possible.
• Explain why all students need to have a much higher level of academic skills than previously thought necessary and why they need a different kind of skills—more complex skills and many kinds of non-cognitive skills as well as advanced cognitive skills—to be employable in the new economy.
• Explain why a much higher level of education is now required not just to enable individuals to get and keep good jobs, but to have broadly shared prosperity and well-informed voters and participants in the political life of the country.
• Describe the role of the principal and other school leaders as system designers, strategic thinkers, instructional leaders, and builders of an ethical culture.
• Describe how the NISL program has been designed to equip you with the skills you will need to build the kinds of schools needed to prepare students for the very different world our current students will encounter as adults.
• Begin to design your plan for action learning to help close the gap between where students are and where they need to be.

Be prepared to spend about 2–3 hours on pre-work. It is important to complete the pre-work prior to the beginning of the session in order to participate fully. When the pre-work listed below is used in a particular section, that section is indicated in parentheses.

This pre-work is designed to introduce participants to the fundamental changes to the global economy as the key context and driver of education policy, with implications for American school leaders. It drives participants to reflect on their own personal style of leadership relative to the educational context.

Pre-work that is available digitally can be accessed by clicking on the hyperlinks below or in the appropriate menus in the Unit Library to the right. Pre-work that is not available digitally will have been provided in the materials you received at the beginning of the PIL program and will be notated as such.

• (1.4) Read the Executive Summary from NCEE’s report What Does It Really Mean to Be College and Work Ready?, found in the Readings menu of the Unit 1 Library. What information does this study provide about student learning and expectations?
• (1.6) Read 9 Building Blocks for a World-Class Education System, found in the Readings menu of the Unit 1 Library.
  • Which building block(s) resonates with you? Why?
• (1.3) Read “Friedman: ‘Average Is Officially Over’” (SHRM summary), found in the Readings menu of the Unit 1 Library.
• (1.4) Preview information in the Top Performing Countries menu on the NCEE website. 
  • Skim the overview to Singapore and skim through the full set of data for two to three countries.
• Scan for familiarity Standing on the Shoulders of Giants (NCEE), found in the Readings menu of the Unit 1 Library.

• (1.8) Read “Turnaround! Pasadena High School Case Study,” found in the Case Studies menu of the Unit 1 Library, with the following guiding questions in mind:
  • How would you summarize the context that Judy Codding found as a new principal at Pasadena High School?
  • Why do you think she made the decisions she did?
  • How would you describe Judy as a leader?
• (1.7) Read pp. 17–21 of Chapter 1, “Challenging the Status Quo,” from Leading for Equity. (This book was provided with the professional books you received before the start of the PIL program. This excerpt is also available electronically in the Readings menu of the Unit 1 Library.)
• (1.10) Complete the Instructional Leadership Instrument (ILI) available on the NCEE Portal. (In the Home screen on the left side menu, click on Tools, then click on Diagnostics. Click on the “new” button to begin the ILI.)
  • If you are new to a leadership position, use the instrument to help you think about how you might prioritize your needs or areas of focus. 
  • If you are in an assistant position and you believe you are not in control of certain aspects, think about what you would do if you had control. 
  • As you complete this diagnostic, rate the degree to which you consider each practice or activity a personal “priority.” 
    • We define priority as “the things you, as leader, put focused time and resources behind to add value to the work of teaching and learning.” We acknowledge that most, if not all, of the items on the ILI could be considered important but a leader cannot necessarily give equal attention to everything at once. So, we ask that you honestly determine which specific practices/characteristics currently take priority.

• Watch the video Bob Hughes: Welcome to the EDP available on the NCEE’s Portal.
• Watch the video Marc Tucker: American Education in the 21st Century available on the NCEE’s Portal.
• Read “Best Practices in Leadership Development” (Marie Eiter).
• Read “Best Practices in Professional Military Education” (Hughes and Tretler).

• NISL materials
• Journal
• Laptop or tablet with wireless Internet capabilities

• Executive Summary: What Does It Really Mean to Be College and Work Ready?

• 9 Building Blocks for a World-Class Education System

• “Friedman: ‘Average Is Officially Over’”

• Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

• “Turnaround! Pasadena High School Case Study”

• “Best Practices in Leadership Development”

• Leading for Equity

• NCEE Portal Quick-Start Guide

• “Ten Myths about Education in the United States and What It Will Take to Fix Our Schools”

• Top Performing Countries Report

• “NCEE Top Performers Analysis Worksheet—Model”
• NCEE Top Performers Analysis Worksheet
• “The Principal’s Challenges—Group Discussion”
• “Framework for Leadership”
• Action learning template, accessed from the main menu under Tools > Action Learning
• Instructional Leadership Instrument diagnostic, accessed from the main menu under Tools > Diagnostics

• Unit 1 – Day 1 Slides, PIL 2021 version
• Unit 1 – Day 2 Slides, PIL 2021 version

• Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD)
• Common Core State Standards Initiative
• Council of Chief State School Officers Interstate Consortium
• The Education Trust
• The Efficacy Institute
• National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP)
• National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP)
• National Center for Education Statistics
• National Center on Education and the Economy
• Partnership for 21^st Century Learning
• TED: Ideas Worth Spreading
• TED: Ideas Worth Spreading—Ian Golden: Navigating our global future

• Trace the thread of the changing global economy as context and driver of new requirements for a workforce defined by high skill levels and creative ideas. 
• Look at how high-performing countries (defined by measures of education efficacy, equity, and efficiency) apply a coherent systems approach to education as a strategy to address these new workforce requirements.
• Examine those new workforce requirements (i.e., what is meant by “college and work ready”) in a more precise manner.
• Look at the components and design of coherent education systems put in place by high-performing countries.

• Autor, David H. Polanyi’s Paradox and the Shape of Employment Growth. Paper prepared for Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas, Jackson Hole Conference, August 22, 2014.
• Bernanke, Benjamin S. Education and Economic Competitiveness. Speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Education and Workforce Summit, 2007. http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20070924a.htm
• Bryk, Anthony S.; Louis M. Gomez, Alicia Grunow, and Paul G. LeMahieu. Learning to Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better. Cambridge: Harvard Education Press, 2015.
• Bryk, Anthony S.; Penny Bender Sebring, Elaine Allensworth, Stuart Luppescu, and John Q. Easton. Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
• Brynjolfsson, Erik, and Andrew McAfee. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014.
• Christensen, Clayton, Michael Horn and Curtis Johnson. Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. New York: McGraw Hill, 2008.
• Collins, Allan. Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America. New York: Teachers College Press, 2009.
• Darling-Hammond, Linda. The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future. New York: Teachers College Press, 2010.
• Dodgson, Mark and David Gann. Innovation: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2010.
• Gardner, Howard. Five Minds For the Future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2006.
• Goldin, Claudia, and Lawrence F. Katz. The Race Between Education and Technology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
• Hargreaves, Andy; Alan Boyle, and Alma Harris, Uplifting Leadership: How Organizations, Teams, and Communities Raise Performance. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2014.
• Hirsch, E.D., Jr. The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
• Pink, Daniel. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. New York: Penguin. 2006.
• Putnam, Robert D. Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015.
• Ravitch, Diane. The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education. New York: Basic Books, 2010.
• Rosen, Larry. Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and the Way They Learn. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
• Stegar, Manfred. Globalization: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2009.
• Tough, Paul. Whatever it Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 2008.
• Trilling, Bernie and Charles Fadel. 21^st Century Skills: Learning for Life n Our Times. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2009.
• Wagner, Tony. The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need—And What We Can Do About It. New York: Basic Books, 2008.
• Zakaria, Fareed. The Post-American World. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2008.
• Zhao, Yong. Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization. Alexandria: ASCD, 2009.

• To locate a State Education Agency: National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)

• To learn more about TIMSS: Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS)

• To learn more about PISA: Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

• To learn more about NAEP: National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)