Fed Chair Powell blames US educational attainment…among other dysfunctional factors like opiod crisis.
Here’s Powell’s explanation: “It’s a combination of things, no doubt. It is that educational attainment in the United States, which was once the highest, has really fallen relative to our peers. And particularly among lower- and middle-income people, the level of educational attainment has really plateaued. And that’s the key thing for keeping in the labor market these days.”
Here’s a link to the WaPo article with more detail.
That lack of educational attainment in US might be seen as an indictment against the conventional education institutions in the US, who seem to fail worst for those who need the most help. Part of the reason is related to the way we fund public education, with great discrepancies between schools in different neighborhoods. That has proved a daunting challenge.
Community Schools are one current method to maximize local neighborhood resources, but even then, will poor neighborhoods have schools with the same resources for success as neighborhoods with higher incomes per capita?
The last two state legislature sessions in NM have brought huge increases in the amounts designated to spend on education at the State level. Chiefly that has taken the form of increased salaries for teachers, with a small increase in the actual numbers of teachers being employed.
Teachers deserve decent compensation at a level commensurate with the importance and difficulty of the work. Additionaly, there’s a competitive market among states for a less than sufficient pool of teachers. But there’s little talk in NM about ways and means to increase attainment across the board, as teacher salaries by themselves are not likely to be a main change agent for “results” from the classroom.
One imagines then, there is a place for innovation in educational MO, which might change the role of teachers in ways that do create a main change agent for results from the classroom. IF Ed Tech can perform certain functions well enough, the current teacher rosters in schools might be redefined in ways that give the individual students who need the most help more teacher time and attention, and make the whole educational project more efficient and more effective.
IOW Ed Tech still holds a promise, or at least a glimmer of hope, that needed resources can be supplied regardless of a school’s economic “neighborhood”, and educational attainment for the “underclass” thus can be achieved.