Globalization and America’s Education Reform

One important piece of news in America lately is that Michelle Rhee, the Korean-American chancellor of the District of Columbia’s public schools, resigned before her term was up.

Since taking office in June 2007, Michelle Rhee, supported by former Washington mayor Adrian Fenty, has taken drastic measures to promote public primary- and secondary-education reform. One of the most striking measures that she took was breaking the deep-rooted seniority system and firing hundreds of incompetent teachers. Washington public school students were the beneficiaries of this policy. Their grades, which used to rank almost last in all of the American states, have improved considerably. Michelle Rhee has therefore become a revolutionary education celebrity and has been well-known to Americans for the past few years.

Rhee’s reform has, of course, offended the vested interests, especially of the African-American workers who have worked in the old public school system for their entire lives. The reform caused the black community in Washington to turn against Rhee. It also resulted in the failure of reelection for the supportive Mayor Fenty. The newly elected mayor, unlike his predecessor, was hostile toward Rhee’s education reform. Rhee therefore has no choice but to resign, a major setback for American education reform.

America’s education reform has been an important issue in society for many years. But it is more urgent now under the influences of globalization. As I mentioned before, capital — especially American capital — is the biggest winner in globalization. The major winners besides that are technology and knowledge. The Wall Street Journal commented that America has recently entered into an “idea-driven economy.” Obvious proof of this societal trend is that more and more next-generation billionaires are from high-technology industries.

America has the most advanced higher education and research systems, which entitles the country to obtain a significant amount of intellectual property in the globalization process. However, the quality of primary and secondary education is continuously falling, causing the country to lose its competitiveness in the manufacturing industry and causing the decline of the blue-collar middle class. In the long run, the falling quality of primary and secondary education is going to threaten the country’s economic dominance in the world.

Take the current China-U.S. exchange-rate controversy, for example: Even if the RMB (Chinese currency) appreciated drastically, America’s employment situation is not going to improve very much because of that. The reason is because with its current education and technology background, the American blue-collar class is not capable of competing with workers from many of the newly developing industrialized countries in Asia.

The situation occurred not because American workers demand high wages. For example, German workers also have high wages and even more social welfare [programs], yet it still maintains its international competitiveness in the manufacturing industry. Its main target for export growth is China. German workers’ education and technology backgrounds are the key components of their competitiveness.

The former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Raghuram Rajan, an Indian professor at the University of Chicago, recently pointed out in the German magazine Der Spiegel that the reason for the American housing bubble — which triggered the largest global economic crisis since World War II — was that American politicians were unable to increase the lower class’ stagnant income by improving their educational level. Instead, the politicians passed loose home-mortgage policies to increase the lower class’ spending power. The burst of the false property bubble highlighted even more of the long-term dilemma faced by the American blue-collar class.

From a historic standpoint, education is the cornerstone of American fortunes. The New York Times had pointed out years ago that education is the real driving force for America to become the world’s economic and military power. Because it lacked the hereditary social customs of Europe, America became the world leader in giving education to the public, therefore cultivating a working class whose average educational level ranked first in the world, and therefore [it] became a world economic leader. At the end of World War II, America’s Congress passed the “GI Bill” to make advanced education available to the general public. The bill and the fact that education was available to everyone ensured America’s long-term economic development after the war. It also ensured America’s final victory in the Cold War.

But now the quality of America’s public education is not only decreasing in the international level, it is also falling behind compared to its own history: The average educational level of the younger generation is gradually decreasing, compared to their parents, who were the “baby boomer” generation. Faced with this situation, America is exacerbated by the urgency of education reform — unprecedented since the founding of the United States.

Obama has been making wanton promises in education reform, even when he was still running for president. But Rome was not built in one day, and neither was the rigid American public education [system] and its inefficiency. One of the biggest shortcomings of the public education system is that the teachers themselves lack competition — a competition that can force them to get out of their comfort zone and actually improve their quality as teachers. But as an important social foundation and one of the biggest donors to the Democratic Party, the teachers’ union strongly opposed the introduction of “internecine” inside competition. Obama, facing the return of the Republicans because of the economic stagnation, can’t afford to get into trouble with one of his biggest supporters.

The departure of Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of the District of Columbia’s public schools, is one more proof that the wish to use education reform to revive the U.S. hegemony in the world is water that is much too distant to put out a nearby fire.

(The author works in America’s research center.)