Why Business Backs Education Standards

Business cares about education standards because the well-being of their companies and every American is at stake. In the international marketplace, says former Lockheed-Martin chief executive officer (CEO) Norman Augustine, the United States is involved in a "battle of the classrooms." As a result, business leaders believe that standards are a sine qua non for addressing education problems and moving ahead.

If the United States is to compete effectively in the demanding international economy, and if each person is to contribute to and benefit from the nation's economic success, the most potent weapons in its competitive arsenal are skill and intelligence. The country cannot rely on history or good luck to provide these tools to the work force. They must be developed, nourished, and honed by the education system. Students need to know what the modern world expects them to know and be able to do, in clear, unequivocal statements. The nation's schools must use standards to enhance learning.

Standards express a clear mission for schools or unmask schools that are ineffective. They shape curriculum. They challenge students to achieve and teachers to perform at their best. They guide assessment. Accountability and professional development for teachers also depend on clear standards for authentic assessment and excellence in teaching. Standards are compass and rudder, pole star and map, for schools.

Higher standards are a necessity, lest low ones become self-fulfilling prophecies--prescriptions for personal failure, not only in the classroom but also in life. The standards movement allows the ultimate equity issue to be addressed; that is, aiming for the best for every student regardless of race or economic status. Standards mean that students grow as they learn; without them, they learn to settle. If U.S. companies are to succeed in the global marketplace and individuals are to become self-supporting contributing citizens, American students must be expected--not simply cheered on--to master difficult material in core academic subjects. That, after all, is what is routinely expected of students in the classrooms of America's fiercest competitor nations. A high school diploma or college degree must bear testimony to a high level of achievement, not just to having filled required hours of seat time.

Today's business leaders expect that a person looking for a skilled job has mastered basic and advanced knowledge and skills in the arts and sciences, the processes of oral and written communication, and the use of computers and electronic databases. Most important, this person should know how to learn. New hires should also bring to the job the competencies outlined in the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) requirements (see box opposite). If this basic repertoire is not mastered in schools, business leaders reasonably believe that "people who lack such skills will be isolated--at risk, socially, politically, and economically--posing dire consequences for the nation as well as the individual." ¹

The New Economy

In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, journalist Thomas L. Friedman tells a story about Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence H. Summers that shows how the twin forces of globalization and communications technology have combined to change daily life.

In 1988, while working in Chicago on the presidential campaign of Democrat Michael S. Dukakis, Summers reports that he was temporarily assigned to a car equipped with a telephone. Summers thought this was "sufficiently neat" to call his wife, solely for the purpose of telling her he was riding in a car that had a phone in it. In 1997 Summers was on Treasury Department business in the Ivory Coast, visiting a village accessible only by canoe. Just as he was stepping into the canoe to make the trip back to the capital, a government official in his party handed him a cell phone and said, "Washington has a question for you." In less than a decade he had gone...