This presentation was given by Marc Tucker of the National Centre on Education and Economy of the United States at the GCES Conference on Education Governance: The Role of Data in Tallinn on 12 February during the session on Keynote: Education, governance and data.

1. Education Governance: The Role of
Data
Thinking About Governance:
A Story and Some Dimension Lines
Marc Tucker
National Center on Education and the Economy
February 2015
Governing Complex Education Systems

2. Governance in the USA: One Man’s View
 US led the world in attainment (quantity of ed) till the 1970s
 Ended up with the world’s best-educated workforce
 Did it with hardly any governance at the federal level, fractionated
and weak governance at state level, uniquely powerful districts built
on local funding model, and cheap teachers
 Worked really well for us, system brilliantly adapted to needs of mass
production economy

3. Governance in the USA: Enter the 1970s
 Globalization and automation: jobs dry up for those with only
basic skills
 US winds up with surplus of low-skilled workers, shortage of
high skill workers, middle class hollowed out
 Costs increase by factor of 2.5 but
 Achievement of high school students level since 1970s
 US exhausts limits of cheap-teacher, local control model

4. More and More Countries Outperform US
US Rankings on PISA
Reading Mathematics Science
2000 (32)
2003 (41)
2006 (57)
2009 (65)
2012 (65)
15 17 14
18 28 22
NR 34 28
17 30 22
24 36 27

5. US In Deep Trouble
 Three measures
 Average achievement
 Equity
 Productivity
 Most important problem we face:
 Failure to modernize our governance

6. Critical Premise: The Modern Model
 High wage economies must provide to all a new kind of mass education: quality of
education formerly provided only to a small elite, individualized and flexible
 Will require highly educated, very well trained and high status teacher corps
 Implies radical shift from the system model based on cheap teachers managed as
blue collar workers in an early 20th century form or work organization

7. Crucial Importance of Governance
Requires governance system designed to support the move to such a system
 Able to lead country to very different model and to execute on that model, common skeleton,
highly variable and flexible implementation within that skeleton
 Countries experiencing very different capacities to pull this off; everything depends on:
 sense of urgency
 quality of political leadership
 willingness to trust professionals
 ability to get consensus

8. Dimension #1: Where the Buck Stops
 Has to be a place where the buck stops
 The nation vs. the state or province
 Does not matter
Canada and Germany at one end
Finland, Singapore or Estonia at the other
 Australia mixed case
 US fractionated

9. Dimension #2:Industrial Blue Collar Model vs.
Professional Model
 Industrial blue collar model
 Cheap teachers, recruited from bottom high school
performers
 Tight administrative, regulatory control
 Punitive accountability
 Little latitude for professional judgment
 Blue collar unions take no responsibility for oucomes

10. Dimension #2:Industrial Blue Collar Model vs.
Professional Model
 Professional Model
 Expensive teachers, recruited from top high
school performers
Professional management model
Goals clear
Wide latitude for professional judgment
Teachers take responsibility for outcomes

11. Dimension #2:Industrial Blue Collar Model vs.
Professional Model
 Blue collar model
United States
UK
 Professional model
Shanghai
Estonia

12. Dimension #3: Trust vs. Anger
LOW-QUALITY
TEACHING, LOW
STATUS OF TEACHERS
POOR QUALITY
INITIAL TEACHERS
PUBLIC ANGER AT
TEACHERS, EVEN
HARDER TO GET GOOD
TEACHERS, DECLINING
STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

13. Dimension #3: Trust vs. Anger
HIGHER QUALITY
APPLICANTS TO
TEACHER ED
PROGRAM
MAKE
TEACHING MORE
ATTRACTIVE
BETTER TEACHING,
BETTER STUDENT
RESULTS

14. Dimension #3: Trust vs. Anger
Anger
United States
England
 Trust
Finland
Singapore

15. Dimension #4: Centralization vs.
Recentralization vs. Decentralization
 Centralization
United States
UK
 Recentralization
Germany
 Decentralization
Singapore

16. Dimension #4: But That is the Wrong
Way to Think About It
 Candidates for Centralization —
 Student achievement standards
 Broad curriculum framework
 Qualification system
 Small set of high quality national examinations
 Responsibility for providing high quality teachers
 Collection of taxes and disbursement to schools

17. Dimension #4: Candidates for Decentralization
 Development of lessons
 Accountability regimes
 Development of instructional materials
 School improvement/teacher professional dev’t
 Choice of instructional strategies
 School organization and management

18. Dimension #4: A Story
 Singapore’s Minister of Education, Tharman
Shanmugaratnam, goes to Japan to see how the
Japanese are supporting the teaching of
creativity in their schools

19. Dimension #5: Market Models
vs. Administrative Models
 Market models
United States
Netherlands
New Zealand
 Administrative models
Most other countries

20. Dimension #5: Market Models
vs. Administrative Models
Value for choice vs. value on equal access
Value placed on small school-to-school
variation in outcomes vs. value placed on
innovation

21. Dimension #6:Value Placed on National
Cohesion vs. Value on Local Determination
 National cohesion
 Singapore
 Japan
 France
 Local determination
 United States
 Hong Kong

22. Keep Your Eye on the Ball
 As you get better and better teachers, trust your
teachers and giver them more and more scope for
exercising their professional judgment
 But, as the same time, make sure they know what the
society wants for its students and provide the
infrastructure—standards, exams, qualification
system, etc—needed to structure the right incentives
for all the actors

23. Balance Good Professional Judgment
With High Level Political Guidance
 Set your ministry up so that it will attract first
class professional educators to career positions
 Make sure that education policy is made by
politicians with access to and the trust of the top
political officials
 Do NOT try to isolate education from politics

24. Why is Governance So Important
 The ability of the whole system to produce
superior results depends on the judgment,
experience and wisdom of the people who set the
direction for the enterprise, the authority they
have to implement their goals, and the legitimacy
they enjoy to exercise that authority