Governors Discuss “Inconvenient Truth #2” at Legislative Meeting

Attracting teachers, improving standards, and helping students to become critical thinkers were key priorities identified at the National Governors Association (NGA) winter legislative meeting, which took place in Washington in late February. The session was part of a yearlong initiative, “Innovation America,” which focuses on what one speaker characterized as a second “inconvenient truth”—growing challenges to the nation’s ability to compete with countries that embrace more rigor in math and science education. 

Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, this year’s NGA chair, is spearheading the governors’ efforts to shed light on the “STEM” disciplines—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—key areas in need of education reform and central to the United States’ standing on international markers of student achievement, such as the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). 

Speakers from the states, academia, business, and government shed light on the challenge of maintaining international competitiveness through improved education for the nation’s children. 

William Schmidt, university distinguished professor at Michigan State University, is an outspoken proponent of mathematics education reform. According to Schmidt, state standards in mathematics should be revisited to align more closely with international benchmarks. He also advocates more stringent high school course requirements, greater rigor in the teacher certification process, and state collaboration on common standards. 

“Inconsistent standards have been the ‘Achilles’ heel’ of No Child Left Behind,” said Schmidt, because of resulting inequalities between states and even districts within the states. 

It’s important not to limit the focus to math and science, according to Yvonne Spicer, associate director, National Center for Technological Literacy, Boston Museum of Science. “Technology and engineering are the connectors for math and science,” she said. “Just as technology [alone] doesn’t create innovation, neither do math and science—it’s the application that counts.” 

Education should help students make those connections by helping them to “think like an engineer”—to become critical thinkers. Spicer supports a focus on engineering and technology applications starting in kindergarten and culminating with a universal requirement of four years each of math and science for the nation’s high school students. 

Business leaders and scientists share educators’ concerns about the need for education reform. According to Robert Rubin, former U.S. treasury secretary, “the U.S. economy’s growth has masked problems with suboptimal education.”

Rubin believes it will take a realistic, bipartisan approach involving “tough political choices” to turn out students better prepared to achieve in the face of international competition. 

Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers drew a distinction between technology and innovation. The role of technology is “to enable leaders to enact strategies” that are rooted in creativity and innovation. Chambers pointed to the growing role technology will play in teaching and learning. Technology can make learning more personalized, job-specific, collaborative, and lifelong, he said. 

Physician and former astronaut Mae Jennison said that science literacy is more than book learning; science-literate students understand the way science affects daily life. Kids need to learn to “think their way through the day.” According to Jennison, children are born ready to do just that. She warned against educational practices that do the opposite of building on that readiness. “Kids start their education with an innate curiosity about how things work; rather than building on that, all too often we drill it out of them,” she said. 

Innovative ways to attract new math teachers, as well as to retain and provide continuing education to veteran teachers, are of particular interest to James Simons, a mathematician, philanthropist, and founder of Renaissance Technologies. Simons’s “Inconvenient Truth #2” concerns the impact of weaknesses in math and science education. The answer, he said, is to make careers in math and science teaching more attractive to the best mathematicians and scientists. “In World War Two, the best pilots didn’t fly—they taught other pilots,” he said. 

The Simons Foundation has underwritten Math for America, a program being piloted in New York to strengthen the pool of math teachers in the city’s public schools. Math for America uses a two-pronged approach; one aims to recruit new college graduates to teach math; the other attracts in-practice teachers to sharpen their skills and to serve as “master teachers” to mentor less experienced colleagues. Both programs offer cash and educational incentives to attract high-quality teachers. 

Despite the success of Math for America, Simons believes the solution nationally must come from the public sector. He hopes the New York pilot will lead to a national “math/ science teacher corps.” 

The governors agree with Simons on the need for federal involvement, as reflected in the meeting’s closing session. NGA unveiled a legislative proposal that would facilitate collaboration between regions, states, higher education, and the private sector to address three innovation goals at the federal level. They are: 

• improve K–12 math and science proficiency to increase the number of quality of scientists and engineers graduating from college
• promote innovation throughout the states and targeting innovative regions that can compete globally
• create more flexible workforce programs

“Governors are best suited to take the lead in promoting innovation,” Napolitano said. “But creating an innovative nation will require cooperation between decision makers at the federal and state levels.” 

Measured Progress is a member of NGA’s Corporate Fellows Program. The Corporate Fellows Program provides intellectual and financial resources to the NGA Center for Best Practices, the nation’s only dedicated consulting firm for governors and their key policy staff. The Center’s mission is to develop and implement innovative solutions to public policy challenges. Measured Progress joined the Center because of the two organizations’ shared commitment to improve teaching and learning. Measured Progress brings nearly 25 years of experience in working with states to develop rigorous standards and effective assessments to its involvement with NGA and the Center for Best Practices.