Give teachers, students tools to be successful

By Jim Goodnight
President and CEO, SAS Institute

Two weeks ago the Financial Times ran the headline "China Leads the World in the Growth of Scientific Research." China is now the second-largest producer of scientific papers in chemistry and materials science, and will pass the United States within 10 years.

A Jan. 4 BusinessWeek headline read "Americans fall behind in U.S. patents issued for the first time in 2009." More U.S. patents were issued to foreign residents than to U.S. residents.

Scientific papers and patents are a good measure of a country's innovation and creativity. The United States is weakening. We're not keeping up.

At the university level, the United States is still No. 1 in the world. On just about every top 20 list, the United States will have the majority, followed by the United Kingdom. But our K-12 system needs serious overhauling. The United States ranks:

• No. 25 in math among developed countries (for 15-year-olds);
• No. 21 in science; and
• No. 20 in graduation rates.

Between 30 percent and 35 percent of American students do not graduate from high school. Of those who do graduate from high school, fewer and fewer are interested in pursuing careers in STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and math.

These are the skills that are needed for a knowledge economy. And, while most kids in the United States may not be interested in the STEM skills, kids in India, China and the rest of Asia are. The knowledge jobs will go to where the talent is located, so in the future, more and more of our knowledge jobs and the associated innovation and creativity will be moving to Asia.

Is it possible to reverse the trend? Quite frankly, I don't believe it is. Here's why: The Chinese, Indians and other Asian countries outnumber us around 10 to 1 in population, and more and more of them are going to college and getting advanced degrees, especially in the STEM areas. So we have a big numbers problem.

We should be encouraging foreign Ph.D. students to stay here and work after they get their diplomas. They still come here because our universities remain the best in the world. There should be no limits on the number of STEM Ph.D.s in the United States.

During the '70s, '80s and '90s, many foreign Ph.D.s stayed and went on to innovate here in the United States and create new jobs. After 9/11, they were no longer welcome.

During the last Bush administration they were kept out for fear of terrorism. The Obama administration wants to keep them out because the unions say they take American jobs or lower American salaries. So, we will continue sending some of the best and brightest students back to India, China and Korea to innovate there.

What about our K-12 system? It can be fixed, but I am afraid we may be too late. By the time it's fixed, most of the knowledge jobs may be in Asia.

One of the first things that should be done is to get teachers out of the isolated classrooms in which they spend the vast majority of the day. Let's allow them the flexibility to talk to each other about best practices and what's working with individual students. This practice is known as professional learning communities – or PLCs – and is already being effectively used in pockets around the country. We should encourage system-wide meetings of teachers in the same discipline to learn what other teachers are doing.

The SAS Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS) can be used to identify the teachers whose kids have outperformed their predicted growth. We can study the methods that led to success so they can be shared.

University schools of education should be required to study their graduates' effectiveness to make sure that the skills they are teaching are relevant.

Let's bring technology into the schools. So many of today's kids drop out because they are bored or find what is being taught to be irrelevant. Today's generation of kids is the most wired generation in history. Let's let them use these tools.

Every teacher and student should have a laptop computer, and the teacher should be trained in its use. Curriculum resources are not a problem. SAS provides award-winning, online curriculum material for grades 8-12 at no charge.

We have also provided laptops for the teachers at 31 schools in North Carolina and helped train them. The governor, the General Assembly and the Golden Leaf Foundation provided laptops for the kids. Public-private partnerships like this are key to transforming our education system.

Results from integrating technology into classrooms and administration are encouraging. The superintendent of Wilson County Schools, Larry Price, reports that since starting a one-to-one laptop initiative, student discipline incidents have decreased about 12.5 percent and student suspensions are down about 17 percent. The most remarkable early finding is that their dropout rate has decreased by 41 percent. The students are engaged so they stay in school.

At Raleigh's Centennial Campus Middle School, the eighth-graders all have laptops. The cohort of students that moved from seventh to eighth grade last year increased their reading scores by 15.9 percent and math scores by 9.1 percent. Their initiative is only in its third year, so you can only imagine what these kids will do in the future.

There is no better goal for the future of our state, and of our country, than to equip the next generations of our citizens to not only survive in the world of tomorrow, but to thrive and prosper.

Jim Goodnight spoke during a dinner for Emerging Issues Forum supporters on Feb. 8.