Editorial: Demanding accountability in education, industry

Manufacturers across America are deeply concerned about the availability of skilled workers, now and in the future, as being essential to our ability to compete in the global economy. At the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), we know that closing this skills gap must start with improving education in our primary, secondary and post-secondary schools.

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, while not a perfect piece of legislation, has led us in the right direction. The legislation expires this year, and our hope is that with some refining and improvement it will continue to enhance our education system.

The reauthorization debate gives the manufacturing community opportunity to speak up about what is working — and what is not — in the education of America’s workforce. We are pushing Congress to reauthorize NCLB in a way that will provide students with necessary skills for dynamic, 21st-century careers. Let’s emphasize science, technology, engineering and math education; improve teacher and principal quality; and maintain and improve accountability in our schools.

The case for reauthorization lies in the clear evidence that the No Child Left Behind Act, despite any of its shortfalls, has already made a positive difference in the education of the nation’s schoolchildren.

For more than 40 years, the federal government made large expenditures in K-12 education yet the achievement gap between minority and low-income students and their more prosperous peers has remained relatively flat. NCLB established new standards for schools, demanding accountability in exchange for the billons of dollars they had been receiving.

Recent results from the “Nation’s Report Card” show that those standards have helped schools make progress. In fourth grade reading, the achievement gap between white and African-American students is at an all-time low. In eighth-grade math, the achievement gap between white and minority students has narrowed since 2003. 

Manufacturers are not surprised by these results. After all, manufacturing has long prospered by the principle that measurement makes improvement possible. Reliable measurement provides a baseline for the evaluation, adaptations and innovation that drive U.S. productivity.

Being held directly accountable is less popular with some in the educational world because objective measurements bring consequences — rewards and penalties as well as insistent demands from parents, communities and employers to, “Do better.”

In the legislative process, the danger is that lawmakers may respond to this resistance by creating a system so complex and riddled with loopholes that accountability becomes virtually meaningless. 

The challenge is to remember what matters — the education of the nation’s children, supported by a system that imparts the basic knowledge and then teaches the skills needed to lead a productive life in today’s complex society and demanding economy.

John Engler is president of the National Association of Manufacturers and the former three-term governor of Michigan.