1. Test Scores and Wages

Economists connect standardized test scores to hourly wages by taking gains in the scores and computing corresponding increases in dollars earned. They also use broad supervisory ratings of employees (high, medium, and low) to estimate worker productivity. Both measures are, of course, proxies for actual productivity, and they certainly stretch reality. Using standardized achievement tests, for example, assumes that these instruments measure the analytic, creative, and practical skills and positive attitudes valued by employers. Gauging the results against hourly wages assumes that pay is set by equals, by employer and worker negotiating in fully competitive markets. Furthermore, the measures require complex manipulation of data and substantial interpretation and contain many methodological problems. Little wonder that experts disagree on the worth of such data in estimating worker productivity. Yet conclusions are put forward as unadorned facts.³

2. Skills Deficits

In this argument, not only low worker productivity and decreasing global competitiveness but also youth unemployment and a widening gap between high-salary and low-wage jobs all stem from inadequate knowledge and skills that high school graduates bring to the workplace. The skills-deficit argument first appeared in the late 19^th century, when industrial leaders also were deeply concerned about global competition, at that time from German and British manufacturers. In 1898, for example, the president of the National Association of Manufacturers told members at the group's annual conference:

As a result, a broad coalition of civic, business, labor, and education leaders pressed district, state, and federal policymakers to introduce vocational curricula so U.S. students would be better prepared for the industrial work-place. By 1917, federal policy makers decided to subsidize high school industrial arts and home economics courses, while states and districts adopted vocational education and guidance in all schools (Kantor 1982; Lazerson and Grubb 1974).

Through the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and Vietnam, moreover, vocational education received enormous political and economic support from business and civic elites. Yet youth unemployment, of course, still rose and fell, remaining especially high among minority populations— and even in flush times, employers grumbled that high school graduates were unprepared for the workplace (Kliebard 1988).

Unfortunately, those who complain of skills deficits rarely specify what knowledge and skills are needed to succeed in an information-based economy, and they generally overlook the wealth of evidence showing that employers are far more concerned about applicants' attitudes and behavior than about their school-based knowledge in math or science. In fact, the supposed mismatch between worker skills and employer desires has little evidence to support it other than sturdy popular and media-amplified assertions. It is thus simply rash to suggest that students who are pressed by centralized, standards-based reforms to take more math and science courses or who do well on standardized achievement tests will succeed in entry-level jobs or in college.⁴

3. Global Competitiveness

Finally, the prior claims snowball into the assertion that insufficiently educated workers have slowed U.S. productivity and threatened America's position in global markets. This assertion is flawed. For one, it ignores how the United States enjoyed nearly a decade of unbroken prosperity in the 1990s. For another, U.S. productivity rates have increased (not decreased) over the past decade. For a third, even with the weaker U.S. economy of 2000–2002, the World Economic Forum found that the United States had the world's second most competitive economy, after Finland. In short, few economists or public officials doubt the predominance of the U.S. economy today.⁵

In light of such prosperity and competitiveness and the pivotal role that student achievement is supposed to play in U.S. economic performance, one might reasonably have expected public schools to be commended for producing graduates who contributed so much to this remarkable record. Yet no such praise has been uttered by corporate leaders, governors, policy analysts, or Oval Office occupants. Perhaps economic gains do not depend so heavily on student test scores as public school critics contend. This has, indeed, dawned on various observers. As economist Kevin Hollenbeck of the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research has put it, “The evidence seems to suggest that mediocre educational results do not threaten economic performance” (Hollenbeck 2001). In this regard, note what historian Lawrence Cremin wrote in 1990 about where responsibility does lie for economic challenges:

To the list of those responsible for economic performance one should add inventors of technologies that contribute significantly to improved productivity and managers (or mismanagers) of U.S. businesses, including CEOs who have been issuing so many fanciful numbers in recent years.

Competing with the list of those who directly influence national economic performance, however, is another list of those business-inspired reformers drawn from civic and economic elites, educators, union officials, and others who, for the past 30 years, helped shape the current purpose: insuring that public schools are little more than boot camps for future employees. Well-intentioned civic and business leaders have done what so many other reformers have been accused of in past decades: they have experimented on teachers and students for over three decades without showing much evidence of success.

The issue is not whether schools should prepare students for productive labor. They should. The issue is that the single-minded pursuit of preparing all students for college and high-paying jobs has narrowed the far broader and historic mission of civic engagement. Historically and presently, schools have been and are still expected to instill civic, social, and humanitarian attitudes and skills that will shape our democracy and influence how graduates lead their lives in their communities. Schools are expected to build student respect for differences in ideas and cultures. Schools are expected to be decent and livable places for the young to spend a large portion of their waking time. These historic and contemporary aims of public schools often have been neglected in the mistaken rush to turn schools into engines for the larger economy (Labaree 1997; Goodlad 1984).

Even more damning are the questions that have been omitted from the current economic and political agendas shaped by business-inspired reformers.

Consider a few of the missing questions:

*Do schools geared toward preparing workers also build literate, active, and morally sensitive citizens who carry out their civic duties?

*How can schools develop independently thinking citizens who earn their living in corporate workplaces?

*When the economy hiccups, unemployment increases, and graduates have little money to secure higher education or find a job matched to their skills, will public schools, now an arm of the economy, get blamed—as they have in the past—for creating the mismatch?

These basic questions, unasked by business-inspired reform coalitions in the past three decades, go unanswered today.