Anne Bryant
Building Partnerships for International Education

November 21, 2002 Washington, D.C. --
I am surrounded by more people who are greater experts on this topic than I. I work with school boards, so those of you who work with school boards know that I cannot speak for 14,700 school boards nor 95,000 people. But I think I can pose a couple of challenges, some key questions to ask and then maybe some strategies around our subject, which is, how do we infuse world education and specifically the issues around Asian culture and education into our classrooms?

So let me start with a couple of challenges.

Challenge one: Our focus right now as a nation is to raise all students' achievement. That's what is behind No Child Left Behind. That is truly what school boards worry about day in and day out. Quite frankly in many places we are making terrific progress. I know we love to read the headlines. There are a few reporters in the room, one of them I know works with the National School Boards Association, but reporters tend to pick the worst headlines--they love it. But I'll tell you that in the last fifteen years drop-out rate has declined, reading scores, though incremental, are up in 4th, 8th and 12th grade, especially among black and Hispanic students, college enrollment has almost doubled in the last forty years and oh, by the way, we've added 7.5 million children to our public schools. These are some of the challenges. SAT and ACT scores, though flat, we've almost doubled the number of kids taking those tests and the number of children in advanced placement. Whenever people "Oh (wring my hands) we're doing a bad job!" I just have to remind them that quite frankly in many many places we're doing a great job. That's not to say we don't have a huge task before us--that is the challenge that we face as school boards and superintendents across our nation.

Second Challenge: State Economies. 38 states are in dire straights. I was just talking to my colleagues in Oklahoma. Yesterday I heard a story that in one district they fired all the custodians. Guess who's cleaning the classrooms? Teachers and students, because there's no money. Cut 80% of your budget, but in the middle of the year, that's a lot when almost 80% of the budget that is personnel costs.

Third Challenge: No Child Left Behind, a huge federal law. It is the law, it's got the right intention. There's a lot of angst out there about implementing No Child Left Behind. What's most important, I think, in this law, is that we've got to work together, states, federal and local government, to make sure that this doesn't lead us to simply focusing on those few tests in reading and math and science. We have got to help districts go beyond that. No Child Left Behind is the name of the bill, but really what we're after is No Child Held Behind, because the reverse of this could be, if we focus on just the tests, than all of the reason we're here in this room gets lost if we're not deepening and enriching that curriculum.

With all of the challenges, key questions: how can we create a climate for teaching and learning, which enriches student skills and knowledge, and capacity for learning? How can we integrate culture, history, religion, geography, literature, other regions all around the education of the whole child? I was very pleased to hear from Vivien Stewart that last night Secretary Rod Paige was here to announce a new initiative around international education. It couldn't be more timely. Because as the world, in our little world, is focusing on this little testing frenzy, we have got to make sure that yes, the reading and mathematics scores go up, but it is as a result of deep and rich curriculum. Not as a drill and skill answer. I think that's a real challenge.

NSBA has four strategic goals, and I'll just share one of them, because it's huge: every school board will lead its community in preparing it's students to succeed in a rapidly changing global society.

How many of you have read Jim Collins' book, Good to Great? That's what's called a BHAG: big, hairy, audacious goal. In fact that is the number one goal of the National School Boards Association. There are a lot of words in that goal. One is "lead its community," getting back to what Stan said, "in preparing all students," not just the ones who take the International Baccalaureate High School program, "in a rapidly changing global society." There are a lot of pieces to that one little goal.

We cannot achieve this goal unless we embed global awareness into everything we do. One of my suggestions is: integration, integration, integration. If we wait for state policies to change, we'll lose half a generation at least. I think our challenge is-I know I can have battlegrounds with some of the people in this room about whether we ought to have fancy state goals and new laws on this. School boards don't like more mandated programs neither do school districts. What we do need to do is help teachers and administrators and school board members to understand that if we integrate this into economics, into arts, into music. I'm advocate for teaching a lot more about various religions in our world, teaching about other cultures, teaching about how other people live, value, have a moral framework. So, embedding it at the local level: how do you do that? Come on, you've been to a local school board meeting. It doesn't start there. It starts with another thing Stan said: community demand. One of our sub-strategies is helping board to really become leaders of their communities. You heard it in that first goal. Reaching out to business leaders, senior citizens, community organizations, parents, and inside the school district. Having conversations around what should students know and be able to do when they leave 12th grade.

And listening, not inviting people to a school board meeting, but going out to a chamber of commerce meeting, going out to a senior citizens center and saying, "What do you think we should be doing in our schools?" The answers will not be, I will guarantee you, "I think your most important role is elevating the reading score three points next year." It's not the answer you'll get from people who care about kids. You will get, "I want my child to get a good job." You'll get that answer. "I want my child to be able to think and write and read and love to learn. I want my kid to be able to solve problems." Business community: "I want people who can design, who can build, who can create. I want people who will challenge the system, who will challenge our systems." Those are the kinds of skills and abilities you will hear when you have conversations in the community. That then can feed the goal-setting process that the board and the superintendent need to be doing around the goals for the district. I would argue that a way in is through these conversations, it is through business partnerships with schools. Not about what business can do for us, but about what can we learn together.

There are also some other interesting areas, because a lot of this is about professional development of teachers. Let's be frank. Not all professional development of teachers is great, but it can get better. It's also about what people come to the teaching profession having learned in their schools of education, and since we have Art Wise here who runs NCATE and David Imig, who is in charge of the AACTE, they'll solve it. [laughter] So we've done away with that. We do need to ask, what do teachers come prepared to teach? And for those 3 million teachers who are currently in the system, how can we help them get materials? I think that's one of the things that in our Coalition meeting we've talked about. We know that there are good materials, how do we get them out there.

Finally, I will end by saying, the key around this is integration. It's getting into the thinking of the leadership on the district level. It is getting one of those goals. Whether it's just a short goal in the beginning, whether it's adopting the International Baccalaureate program, whether it's saying that a goal for this district is that by the time kids leave middle school they are starting a foreign language, whether it is a goal around world history or world geography. Start small, because you can't be seen as one more thing that you're putting on us. Rather, you have to talk about what is it that we can do to make teaching and learning richer. It's a lot more fun to learn about math and do it with a school across the world also doing the same environmental service learning project, than it is with a boring math textbook. I just end by saying, integration, integration, integration.

Finally, think about what you want your children, or in some cases grandchildren, to be about in their lives. And it is to be the person who thinks about the other person's moccasins. Who understands that to be a leader in our society we have got to be more inclusive, be more patient with other cultures, because we will learn more from them than they will from us.

Anne Bryant is executive director of the National School Boards Association.

LINK
National School Board Association