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One strategy I’m using to get up-to-speed in my position as the new executive director at the Learning First Alliance (LFA) is to delve into the LFA member publications that land on my desk almost daily. It is true that each publication is a wealth of thoughtful articles that examine the challenges and rewards professional public educators across the nation deal with on a regular basis. I’m reminded that some of my favorite thought-leaders continue to seek new information, explore alternate approaches, and share their observations in ways that remind me that we know a good deal about how to make schooling better, we just lack the will or if not that, the systems thinking approach that could help us do what we know will make us better.

An example of that reality is the article authored by Linda Darling-Hammond, Professor of Education at Stanford University and supporter of teachers par excellent, in the Winter 2010-2011 issue of the American Educator, published by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Dr. Darling-Hammond’s article “Soaring Systems” looks at three nations’ public education system, each of whom started with very little and purposefully built highly productive and equitable systems in the space of only two to three decades. Before considering what those three countries, Finland, Singapore, and South Korea, did to achieve their success, she acknowledges that students in the United States in the highest achieving states and districts do as well as their peers in high-achieving nations. However, in the US, schools serving large numbers of students of color and lower socio-economic students have significantly fewer resources than schools serving more affluent, white students, resulting in the national score ranking that puts the US well down the list of achievement in education. In developed countries around the world the norm is to fund education systems centrally and equally, with additional resources often going to the schools where students needs are greatest. In addition to this common approach to funding education, the three highest achieving nations also did the following:

• Organized teaching around national standards and a core curriculum that focus on higher-order thinking, inquiry and problem solving through rigorous academic content. Teachers collaborate to develop curriculum at the school level and develop school-based assessments. In Finland, the assessments are primarily local but are guided by the national curriculum. So, certainly, local control is not forfeited, rather used appropriately to reflect individual school culture and operating systems.
• Eliminated examination systems that had once tracked students into different middle schools and restricted access to high school. Once a national curriculum was adopted, the nations committed to helping all students master the same essential skills.
• Use assessments that require in-depth knowledge of content and higher-order skills. All three countries have matriculation exams for college admission, and these are the only external examinations in Finland and Singapore
• Invest in strong teacher education programs that recruit top students, completely subsidize their extensive training programs and pay them a stipend while they learn to teach. All three nations overhauled their teacher educational programs to increase pedagogical skills on top of deep content knowledge.
• Pay salaries that are equitable across schools and competitive with other careers, generally comparable to those of engineers. Teachers are viewed as professionally prepared and are well respected.
• Support ongoing teacher learning by ensuring mentoring for beginning teachers and providing 15-25 hours per week for teachers to plan collaboratively and engage in analysis of their work.
• Pursue consistent, long-term reforms by setting goals for expanding, equalizing and improving the education system by steadily implementing the goals and making thoughtful investments in a high-quality educator workforce.

All of these efforts exhibited a systems approach to improvement rather than a scattering of innovations that changed each year.

The disturbing thing about the strategies outlined in Dr. Darling-Hammond’s thoughtful article is that we in the U.S. KNOW these steps and this level of commitment are what need to happen to close the opportunity gap for all our students, thus closing the achievement gap within our country and across the world. For whatever reason, we can’t seem to agree on the “how” to get there. All of us: career educators, policymakers at all levels, parents, community members, and anyone who cares about the future of the United States of America need to commit to figuring it out, working together, and ensuring all our children have the future they deserve.