Volume 26, Number 2
March/April 2010

Progress and Puzzles in Educational Policy Research

How can we foster the growth of schools as learning organizations?

by Richard J. Murnane

 

American education, which served the country so well for the first three-quarters of the twentieth century, is not adequate today—especially because it fails to provide disadvantaged children with the skills they need to escape poverty. Advances in computer technology have dramatically reduced the demand for workers who can simply follow a set of well-defined instructions, while increasing the demand for strong analytical and communication skills. The growing importance of these skill sets in determining labor market earnings makes access to a good education particularly critical.

At the same time, increased inequality in many aspects of American life undermines the ability of families at the bottom of the income distribution to obtain a good education for their children. To take only one example, the poverty into which a large percentage of urban children are born hinders the development of the language and communications skills that are so important in workplaces where computers are doing more and more of the routine tasks. To my mind, this contributes to the disturbing pattern that the rate of intergenerational economic mobility in the United States is lower today than it is in most other high-income countries.