Interview with Margaret Spellings

Margaret Spellings served as the Secretary of Education in the second Bush Administration and is currently a fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics.

Q: Until not too long ago, French and Spanish were the only two foreign languages available in US public schools. How important is it to expand the selection in the globalizing world?

A: Very, very important. I have visited a high school Mandarin Chinese class; we are starting to see more and more of those and Arabic classes, too. You bet we need more of that.

Of course, the struggle is finding the educators  who can teach  these nontraditional languages. One of the things that we need to do generally—we also need to do this in math and science—is start welcoming what I call “adjuncts” into our schools. We could not run American higher education if every professor had to be a tenured faculty member, especially at community colleges and often at publicly supported four-year institutions.

This idea that the only way you will be welcomed into our schools is by going through the traditional preparation and credentialing process is ridiculous, especially as it relates to these shortage areas like critical foreign languages and math and science. I mean, why can’t  NASA scientists teach at our schools? Yes, they need some training and pedagogy, but this idea that if you are an astronaut, you have to start at the beginning of an often cumbersome and ineffective process means that they [astronauts] are not going to do it, and that is our loss.

Q: Do you think foreign language education needs to start earlier?

A: Yes, I think what we know about kids and how we acquire language and reading skills is that the earlier, the better. In my perfect world—and this obviously could be expensive—every student ought to leave our schools speaking two languages. Right now when we think of bilingual education, we largely think of Spanish speakers learning and becoming proficient in English. So those kids, theoretically if our plan works, leave our schools with two languages: Spanish and English. I would love for all American students to have real proficiency, not just the  ability to order something from the Mexican restaurant. But if you are at “me llamo Anna” at ninth grade, you are not going to be proficient in foreign languages by senior year of high school.

Q: How does the No Child Left Behind policy, which you have recently defended again, relate to what you think is the most pressing concern in the American education system?

A: The raging fire in American education is the achievement gap between poor and minority students and their peers.  No Child Left Behind is aimed at closing that gap by ensuring that we shine a spotlight on the achievement of all students, and prompt action where schools are falling short. .We passed [No Child Left Behind] in late 2001, and it requires students to be reading and doing math on grade level by 2014, according to standards set by each state, not the federal government.  Now if I told your parents that I was going to get you at grade level in twelve years at a very low-level standard--as we have learned that many states have set—your parents would rip you out of your school. What do I want for my children? I want them reading on grade level in the grade they are in right then and there, at a minimum. I do not want to wait until 2014 before my ninth grader is doing ninth grade work. President Bush used to call this “the soft bigotry of low expectations”—this idea that what [wealthier parents want for their] children is somehow different from what poor and minority parents want for their children.

If we cannot have our kids reading and doing math at basic levels by 2014, we are not going to make it in the global knowledge economy. So, not only do I defend No Child Left Behind, I believe we need more of it—we need more rigorous standards and higher levels of attainment. If we would spend a little less time whining about why we cannot get kids on grade level with low-level standards and start getting to work on the problem, we would probably be further ahead. I am a little bit of a hawk on this.

Q: What does America need to do with its education policy to address the immigrant students from Latin America and other places who not familiar with English?

A: Well, we have to crack the code on how we educate non-English speakers. We just have to do a much, much better job. Right now, we are in a big debate on accountability issues—about whether those students should continue to count for accountability purposes, as they currently do under the No Child Left Behind Act. The alternative is that they do not count, we do not test them, we do not find out how they are doing—we just move them through the system.  If that happens, these kids will have very little ability to make it in the global knowledge economy.

We have to take research and figure out what works, we have to slice and dice these populations if you will and look at classroom performance, look at school performance, and figure out what is effective and what is not. The only reason we can now start to think about doing that is because we have the data that No Child Left Behind has brought to bear. We can look at Elm Elementary and Oak Elementary and say, the Hispanic kids at Elm Elementary are doing a whole lot better—what are they doing there? We need this transparency, this data. While it has put a lot of pressure on communities and adults in the system, it is the exact thing that is causing educators and leaders in our system to reevaluate what they are doing and change what is not working.

Q: On the other hand, there is also the question of importing brainpower from abroad. Some of the greatest educational institutions in the world, especially at the university level, are American, and international students fiercely compete to get into such places. Does institutional competitiveness translate into American competitiveness?

A: Yes, absolutely. I have traveled to 27 countries or so during my days in public service, and everywhere that I have visited, there was this admiration for the American higher education system, which frankly may or may not be entirely merited. Why? It is because we are living on the fumes of our reputation. Although we have many fine institutions, we do not really have any data to prove we are the best.  We just assert it, and the world believes it. However, I am encouraged by the partnerships that are developing between our institutions and institutions around the world.

Q: What do you think is the right balance of investment in foreign students, faculty and researchers that US academic institutions should pursue for global competitiveness?

A: Maintaining our global competitiveness is one of the reasons I traveled extensively in the aftermath of 9/11 when our visa numbers—our student visas—got so cumbersome. I led several delegations of university presidents to Latin America and to Asia, and others were led also by Karen Hughes. Condoleezza Rice and I sponsored a summit for university leaders, basically to try to communicate to students from around the world that we wanted them, we welcomed them, and we had places for them. We are seeing a lot more partnering—Education City in Doha, for example. There is great  desire around the world to pair up with American higher education institutions—in the Middle East and Asia and in particular, Latin America.

But I do think the rest of the world has us on the run because they are really investing in higher education and copying the best of American higher education. Because they got there a little later, they are less hide-bound by some of the bureaucratic niceties that we have, like accreditation. In fact, it is interesting to me [that] in the Middle East, they are leapfrogging ahead of us because they do not have this process burden that we have.

So, these are interesting trends.   Another development is the Bologna Process… The idea is for the rest of the world to basically centralize their credentialing so that there is an ability to directly compare a credit at Harvard with a credit at Oxford. The rest of the world is getting their act together so that Australian institutions and Asian institutions and English institutions and Latin American institutions can be more seamless. And, of course, our institutions are resisting the idea, because we are a little bit superior—we think we are, anyway. So, the rest of the world might get a system together that affords their students a lot more flexibility in a way that will be very useful for their competitive advantage.

Q: American students consistently score lower on math and science subject tests compared to students in many Asian or European countries. As some suggest, is the fact that US math and science education is trailing behind other nations the biggest threat to the future power and status of the United States?

A: I think it is threatened, I really do. We go around saying that the American higher education system is the finest in the world. That may be true, but that is not the question. The question is: is it fine enough for the way forward? We do a very, very poor job of getting minority students in and out of college. If you are Hispanic, you have about a one in ten chance of having a baccalaureate degree by the time you are 30 years old.  Especially if you are from a state like mine—Texas—that is worrisome. When half the population has very little education in the state that, if considered a country, would have the 14^th   largest economy in the world, a problem exists. We are not adequately meeting the needs of all of our citizens, and we are not apparently—as evidenced by all of these rankings—providing enough rigor or high enough levels of skill to those who are already in college, particularly in math and science.

It is troubling, obviously, and there is a lot of bipartisan support for initiatives to boost interest and achievement in math and science, but I do not think we have made the sell with students yet. This is something that they have to care about more. And my generation—the parents of today’s students—think, “Oh, we have had a good life and we do not know any math.” They fail to  understand that this is not the world they grew up in.

Q: What do you think US education needs to do to get students interested in science and math?

A: I think we need to show them the real-world connection of why it is important and how exciting the careers and the opportunities are in those fields. If you want to be a problem-solver, if you want to cure cancer, if you want to work on the environment, if you want to work on many of our most notable challenges, math and science is the way forward. But I think we have not made the sell between the perceived dryness of the content and its applicability and how interesting it can be in your life.

I also think we have a lot of weak and uninspiring teachers in math and science, especially in math. This is deadly. No wonder kids tune out. Many of these teachers are ill prepared, particularly at the elementary and middle school levels. They are often intimidated by the material themselves, so guess what--they do not engender wild enthusiasm for their subjects, and the rest is history.

Q: In assessing the higher test performance of Asian students, some will point to structural features in Asian models of education such as longer elementary and middle school days, more frequent short recess periods for exercise, better organization of class time, and an earlier introduction of vocational focus as contributors to a stronger learning experience than that in the United States. Do you believe that the American education system requires an “Asian” overhaul in order to become stronger?

A: As you just said, there are a lot of interesting policy elements in the “Asian” way. We need to use the data and information we have, thanks to No Child Left Behind, that shows us what works, where, with whom, and how.

I do think that one of the things that we should “steal” or co-opt from the Asian way of thinking is focusing our math curriculum, which currently is a mile wide and an inch deep. I certainly saw this with my daughter’s education. It is not laid out very well, it is not sequential, it does not make sense. In Asia, it is  very dense and quite limited.  They do a few things and they do them very well. So every single citizen has a high proficiency in the core stuff, as opposed to our kids who are sort of lost in space with everything in the kitchen sink thrown in as concepts, and none of it in a coherent way.  When I was Secretary, I appointed a national math panel with world-famous mathematicians and one of their major recommendations was that we have a more coherent math curriculum.

Some of those other things, like after school, can work, particularly for those who are behind. There are some other strategies we can incorporate, but I also think there are some things like creativity, independence, and autonomy that we have that we should guard jealously as competitive advantages of our own. We want to preserve those, clearly.

Q: In the wake of recent economic turmoil, greater numbers of students are opting to apply for graduate school instead of entering the struggling job market with Bachelor’s degrees. Furthermore, more college students are expected to financially contribute to their education. How must the American government adapt its policies to effectively support this post-recession generation of students?

A: I think what we have been doing, which is putting more and more financial aid into the system, only to see prices go up and up, is an unsustainable trend. We need to change the equation here by requiring more transparency, more productivity, and more efficiency. We need to build some incentives into the system that will build discipline and cost sensitivity, which we do not have at all now. And, shame on us, shame on policy-makers; we have not really asked or [incentivized] our higher education institutions to behave in any other way but to raise prices in response to our ever-growing levels of financial need.

We also need an accreditation system that is less focused on inputs—books in the library and all those sorts of things—and more on  student results, and we need to start factoring in productivity. We never  really think about this institution—higher education—much in terms of what are we getting for our money and what is [its] value in the market place. I think parents are getting more and more concerned, or fearful, that they spend all this money on their kids’ education only to have them return unemployable or in a low-level job. So, I think parents are scratching their heads and saying, well, wait a minute, I just paid a quarter of a million dollars for their education, and they have no value in the market place—what?

Q: Within the US, there is a flourishing charter school system that experiments with different aspects of these structural changes. Has data from them informed new ways of thinking that could be applied to the public school system at large?

A: Sure, definitely.  We have a lot of data from charter schools. In fact, some of the best schools in our country are charter schools. KIPP Academy, in particular, comes to mind—it was founded in the Bronx and Houston, Texas.

KIPP’s success stems from a couple of things. One is they expect a commitment from not only the student, but also the family that is essentially a contract.   KIPP sets a high framework of expectations, including that all students will go to college, and the whole mindset of the place is “no excuses.” They have an extended school day and school year. The parents are highly involved; the parent also has to sign a contract that says I am committing to not taking my kid out of school to go on vacation, or whatever. It is a  very serious business.

Another element of their success: teachers are often the Teach for America type—young, energetic, well educated, dedicated to doing whatever it takes to help their students succeed.  They’re pretty well compensated because their workday is obviously so much longer, but it is an environment that teachers want to teach in. And they have the results to show for it.