Today, the Aspen Institute held its national education summit titled: An Urgent Call (See http://aspenedsummit.blogspot.com/). The all-day affair brought together key policymakers from across the political spectrum to publicly agree on the moral imperative of education reform and the economic urgency for immediate action. The broad goal was not to hash out any policy details, but to elevate education as a national issue and to secure some kind of consensus on the most important elements of action.
The summit comprised of six sessions throughout the day. Each session provided a different perspective on the current education policy landscape and how to improve it. There was consensus on many of the broad moral and economic themes. The prominent moral themes included:
• Education as a critical civil rights issue;
• Education as a means to looming ethnic and socioeconomic chasms (not just gaps) in our populace; and
• Education as the currency of social opportunity.
The economic themes closely connected to the moral ones. The topic most prominently discussed included:
• A clear understanding that the United States has been in rapid decline over the last 30 years, on measures of international academic accomplishment;
• Emphasis that education is a vital tool for economic competitiveness; and
• Even if the nation’s economy could sustain itself on those fortunate enough to have access to quality education, the matter is essential for long-term domestic stability – closing the looming have and have-not chasm.
The details, of course, are what matter and the heart of the activity would be in the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind. Even though there was consensus on some of the moral and economic imperatives for action, the deep divisions on the technical details of the law appeared to remain. Those divisions could be seen on many occasions, but on this day discretion was the better part of valor and the panelist chose to focus on areas of agreement and not division. So where does that put us? Frankly, not much further than we were before the event, but it did provide the Aspen Institute and important opportunity to bring everyone together to discuss, in a collaborative manner, the fact that all groups, regardless of their orientation, have a lot to agree upon and that this should be frequently presented to the public.
There absolutely is a need for an urgent call, and this call needs to be consistently put before the public. Unfortunately for the Aspen Institute, this also fell on the day when the year 1929 was on the lips of many economists across the nation. If that keeps up, it’s going to be hard to push education to the forefront.
So if you were advising the next administration on some of the key components of national education reform, what would you tell them?
