With students back in school and Nikole Hannah-Jones’ first person account of her struggles with the education system lighting up social media, education is back at the top of the national conversation. What remains clear is that parents and educators are experiencing unprecedented confusion about our education performance and direction while millions of students are unprepared to face a rapidly changing economy.
Some of the examples may be new, but our country has been adrift on education policy for a decade, and students have paid the price. Recent National Assessment of Educational Progress data show modest academic improvement for 9-year-olds following years of significant decline, and middle school math and reading performance has stagnated at historically low levels. At the same time, AI is radically reshaping the skills needed to succeed. Our country desperately needs clear education goals to get back on track.
Instead, we’ve been embroiled in a false argument about who’s in charge—the federal government, state governments, parents. Meanwhile, federal dollars are flowing to states with little guidance and no clear expectations, parents are increasingly worried about basic literacy and math skills, and students are falling further behind.
The truth is all levels of government and society play critical roles. But shared responsibility can also become an excuse for inaction. Our nation needs clear goals for what we expect students to know and be able to do, and policymakers in Washington and state capitals have a responsibility to establish and sustain them. It’s time to set aside the distractions and focus on the main thing: what it will take to get our kids back on track.
Let’s start at the top. As former U.S. education secretaries who respectively served a Republican and a Democratic president, we acknowledge the primary role of states and districts in driving and funding student outcomes.
However, Washington can’t simply send dollars to states and call its job done. The president and Congress should reestablish a clear national commitment to education excellence—setting ambitious goals for student outcomes, investing in research, preserving measurement, and ensuring parents and taxpayers can see whether students are on track.
We’ve done it before. Under No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, the federal government spurred states to raise standards. States set expectations for districts and schools to serve every child. Students responded, with average reading scores for 9-, 13-, and 17-year-olds rising for the first time in decades. Scores for 9- and 13-year-olds even reached historic levels from 2008 to 2012. We need to get back to a balanced federal-state approach that benefits all students.
A priority for the federal side must be a national research agenda. Federal investments in research have rewritten our approach to education, enabling stakeholders to move beyond assumptions to identify best practices. The federal government’s core obligation should be to support research and evaluation so states invest in proven, high-impact strategies.
If the federal government can focus on its responsibility to provide research funding and accountability, and states on setting standards, we can create a federal-state compact that commits both levels of government to advancing a focused set of national priorities: common-sense goals, evidence-based strategies, distinct measures of progress, and public transparency.
Here’s a strong start: Every child deserves access to high-quality early learning. Third grade reading proficiency based on the science of reading should be a nonnegotiable priority in every state. Financial and technical literacy should be an option, if not a priority, for students in their early and middle years of schooling.
In later years, every high school student should have access to rigorous, postsecondary coursework, whether in person or online. Every graduate should leave with a clear path forward—whether that is two- or four-year college or trade, technical, or vocational training. And access to postsecondary education must never be rationed according to family income.
These are bipartisan nation-building goals. They are not driven by politics but by common sense and necessity. We believe American students will be well served if we are tight on these goals but loose on the means of achieving them. The real question is whether we have the will to execute the strategies needed to realize these goals.
This is where governors and state legislators can demonstrate leadership, translating these national priorities into ambitious state goals and resisting the temptation to obscure poor performance by lowering standards. State leaders should be able to answer a simple question: Are students leaving our schools prepared for what comes next?
Unfortunately, in the absence of clear federal goals and strong accountability, too many states have chosen to tell parents their children are on track when they aren’t. The necessary federal role is to convene states around indicators of success and then demand and enforce transparency for meeting them, so students and parents know they are getting the education they deserve. This is not a zero-sum game. Mississippi’s historic gains in student test scores since 2013 does not come at the expense of any other state. Instead, it’s a chance for those states to learn from and build on Mississippi’s progress.
It’s healthy to debate the specifics of a national education agenda, but currently we’re not even doing that. Meanwhile, competitors like China are expanding access to higher education and enhancing curricula to meet the changing needs of the economy. In a global economy, this mismatch in how seriously countries prioritize education may affect your ability to get a good job; it will absolutely affect your children’s and the future of the U.S. economy unless we get it fixed.
In our time in government, we have seen what is possible when leaders of both parties agree on where the country needs to go, even if they disagree about how exactly to get there. America needs that kind of commitment again.
This is a moment for national leadership. We call on the president, Congress, governors, and education leaders to put student achievement back at the center of the nation’s agenda. Washington should provide the direction, research, and transparency. States should set high expectations and act when schools or students fall short. Parents should hold all of us accountable for results.
Improving how our schools prepare the next generation for a rapidly changing economy is not simply an education priority. It’s a national imperative.
