Improving America's Schools The Role of Incentives (1996) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 1-8
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The mechanism for translating investments in human capital into impacts on economic growth is well understood. Although these investments do not create 1
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economic growth over the postwar period.1 Investments in human capital, especially through formal education, are a very significant source of U.S. economic growth.
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economic growth. The year 1983 also marked the publication of the federal government's report on the state of America's schools, A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983)
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This is an edited version of Smith's keynote address at the conference on "Improving the Performance of America's Schools." Smith's address provided a detailed summary of the recent accomplishments of the Congress and the Clinton Administration, including Goals 2000 and the ESEA legislation. Smith and his colleagues describe federal education policy in terms of systemic school reform.
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While previous school reforms have not been notably successful, the diagnosis given by Smith and his colleagues is that teacher training and educational assessments have not been properly aligned to support reform. This will be remedied under systemic school reform by inculcating content standards through teacher training and aligning assessments with performance standards.
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Although they can conceive of research on school performance that could support the systemic approach, this has not been carried out because of the unavailability of appropriate measures of school performance or "output" and because of deficiencies in existing measures of school resources or "inputs." Smith and his colleagues conclude that school performance research revised along the lines they suggest would support systemic school reform. A properly aligned system would provide a clear focus through state education standards.
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Under Goals 2000, federal education policy charges states with standard setting. Hanushek would have states promote incentive schemes for performance as well as establish standards and set overall education policy.
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Incentive schemes are notable by their absence from the resulting program for school reform. The conclusions of economic research on education summarized by Hanushek and the conclusions of education research summarized by Smith and his colleagues represent different ways of abstracting from the same reality about American education.
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