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Remembering 1991: The Year In Education

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As the United States and its allies go to war against Iraq, schools drop their regular lessons to address the fast unfolding events and to help allay students’ fears. Counselors offer special services to children with family members deployed to the Persian Gulf.

• Invoking a 1915 labor law, Gov. Roy Romer intervenes to head off a threatened strike of teachers in Denver.
• Ruling in the Oklahoma City school desegregation case, a divided U.S. Supreme Court holds that districts that were once racially segregated by law may be freed from court-ordered desegregation plans if they have done their best to eradicate the vestiges of their discriminatory systems and have met court orders.
• School boards in Detroit and Minneapolis join New York and Milwaukee in moving to create special schools geared to the needs of black students.
• A new group, Educate America Inc., announces plans to develop a national achievement test for all high-school seniors, and to ask the Congress to fund it and make it mandatory.
• As part of his proposed budget for fiscal 1992, President Bush includes $690 million in education initiatives, including plans to reward school districts that establish choice policies including private schools.
• The vote on the confirmation of Lamar Alexander to be Secretary of Education is delayed by an investigation of his finances initiated by Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum of Ohio.
• After months of bitter debate, the New York City Board of Education approves a plan to distribute condoms in high schools without parental consent. By year’s end, school officials in Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Falmouth and Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., have agreed to make condoms more available to students.
• The Bush Administration asks the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the constitutionality of nonsectarian prayers at public school graduations.
• A federal appeals court overturns a lower-court ruling that New York State’s law requiring disclosure of standardized-test information conflicted with federal copyright law.
• After a two-month delay, Lamar Alexander is confirmed unanimously as Secretary of Education.
• In a review of the management of college athletics, the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics calls on secondary-school officials to stress academic preparation of student-athletes.
• Gov. Roy Romer of Colorado unveils a teacher contract for Denver that abolishes many traditional job protections in exchange for giving teachers unusually wide decisionmaking latitude.
• The National Education Goals Panel unveils a plan to create a national assessment system to measure progress toward reaching the goals for the year 2000.
• A coalition of 50 education and civil-rights groups calls on the President and the Congress to oppose plans to create national achievement tests.
• Nearly half of upper-income parents say they would send their children to public rather than private or parochial schools even if cost were not a factor, a survey finds.
• A Texas judge halts state funding for schools and threatens to bar all local spending unless the legislature finds a solution to the state’s education-finance dilemma.
• President Bush and Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander unveil a national education strategy, called “America 2000,” that includes proposals for “a new generation of American schools” and a system of national tests.
• Thousands of Washington State teachers in 38 districts walk off the job to protest what they say are inadequate funding levels for schools. . Gov. Ann W. Richards of Texas signs a school-finance compromise bill, ending a seven-year battle over financing and freeing up state funds for public schools.
• A national longitudinal study suggests that the “gender gap” between boys’ and girls’ achievement levels in mathematics may be disappearing. . The Richmond (Calif.) Unified School District announces it will close its schools for lack of money. A state court averts the shutdown by ruling that the state is obligated under the California constitution to do whatever is necessary to keep the schools open.
• The state-level leaders of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers in Wisconsin forge an “interim merger agreement” that represents the first formal state alliance of the rival national unions.
• The state of Arizona and some of its school districts face a budgetary tangle because of an unprecedented U.S. Education Department decision that the state’s funding-equalization plan fails to meet standards set under the federal impact-aid program.
• The California Supreme Court rules that prayers at public-high-school graduation ceremonies violate the U.S. Constitution’s ban on government establishment of religion.
• The Education Department announces it is canceling the competition for two research awards and will funnel the money to help implement President Bush’s education strategy. The action helps prompt moves on Capitol Hill to tighten restrictions on the Administration’s use of education-research money. . Chris Whittle, the chairman of Whittle Communications, announces plans to spend more than $60 million over the next three years on research to develop a “new American school” model that will be the basis of a nationwide chain of for-profit private schools.
• The National Assessment Governing Board votes to set the first national standards for student achievement in mathematics. . The Education and Justice departments and the Federal Bureau of Investigation examine the travel practices of former Secretary of Education Lauro F. Cavazos to see if they violated federal regulations.
• The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upholds the constitutionality of the “off the top” funding method used to allocate Chapter 1 aid to pupils in church-affiliated schools; it is the first appellate court to rule on the question, on which federal district courts have been divided.
• The first-ever state-by-state assessment of student achievement finds that performance in mathematics varies widely among states and that student performance over all remains low.
• The Oregon legislature adopts a nationally watched plan that requires students by age 16 to earn a “certificate of initial mastery” before moving on to at least two years of college-preparatory work or job training.
• For the first time since schools there were desegregated 21 years earlier, voters in Jackson, Miss., approve bond requests for schools.
• Bridgeport, Conn., becomes the first municipality in recent memory to seek bankruptcy protection, throwing the city’s financially solvent school district into turmoil.
• The deepening economic recession is taking its toll on state budgets, and a number of states enter the new fiscal year without a budget.
• Gov. William F. Weld of Massachusetts signs into law a bill abolishing the Boston School Committee, a 169-year-old elected board long criticized as politicized and inefficient, and replacing it with a panel appointed by the city’s mayor.
• A Tennessee judge declares the state’s system of funding public schools unconstitutional.
• The New York State Board of Regents approves a set of recommendations growing out of a controversial plan to revise the state’s social-studies curriculum to focus on nonwhite cultures.
• The White House launches the New American Schools Development Corporation, a nonprofit, business-led group seeking to raise $150 million to $200 million in private money to finance research in support of President Bush’s education-reform plan.
• A federal court orders the Detroit Board of Education to admit girls to its three new schools that had been designed specifically for African-American boys.
• The dramatic changes in the Soviet Union touched off by the failed coup against President Mikhail S. Gorbachev focus attention on the inadequacies of U.S. textbooks and curricula dealing with America’s former Cold War rival.
• The average verbal score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test hits an all-time low, the College Board reports.
• The state comptroller of Tennessee begins a probe of financial transactions completed when Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander was president of the University of Tennessee.
• The annual Gallup Poll on education shows strong public support for a longer school year.
• The leaders of more than 30 national subject-matter groups agree to form a coalition to help put curriculum issues at the forefront of education reform.
• As schools open, teacher strikes nationwide are running 36 percent ahead of the year before--a sign, observers say, of deteriorating labor relations due to the economic recession.
• Massachusetts officials report that just 12 of the state’s 361 operating districts have agreed to accept transfer students under a new state choice plan that critics say is deeply flawed.
• The number of blacks graduating from high school and college increased during the 1980’s, the Census Bureau reports, but a wide gap remains in the college-going rates of white and black students.
• The first annual “report card” on the national education goals concludes that the nation has met few of the goals and that information is lacking on many of them.
• The federal Centers for Disease Control reports that nearly 20 percent of all high-school students carry a weapon, and 5 percent carry a firearm, at least once a month.
• In a first-of-its-kind meeting, U.S. and Mexican education officials confer in El Paso, Tex., and pledge cooperation in solving mutual problems.
• Racial desegregation: The U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments on whether the DeKalb County, Ga., schools should be freed from federal-court oversight. The Jefferson County, Ky., school board weighs a plan to promote voluntary busing by providing financial incentives to elementary school pupils.
• Socioeconomic desegregation: School officials in LaCrosse, Wis., propose what is thought to be the first student-assignment plan in the nation to place students explicitly for the sake of achieving socioeconomic balance within schools.
• House and Senate conferees agree on a $31.5-billion funding bill for the Education Department for fiscal year 1992.
• In the off-year elections, Missouri voters overwhelmingly reject a ballot proposal to provide an additional $385 million for public schools and colleges. In New Jersey, voters angry at the tax increases passed by Democratic lawmakers in 1990 turn over both state houses to Republicans. And Gov. Ray Mabus of Mississippi, a leading figure in education reform, loses his bid for re-election at least in part because of his inability to reach a compromise with legislators over funding for school reform.
• The U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments in a Rhode Island case that tests the constitutionality of prayers at public school graduation ceremonies.
• The announcement by the basketball superstar Earvin (Magic) Johnson that he has the virus that causes AIDS leads educators to re-evaluate their sex-education and AIDS-prevention programs.
• The four former U.S. secretaries of education meet in San Francisco for an unprecedented panel discussion on education.
• In a comprehensive report on school readiness, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching calls for a seven-point plan to ensure that all children enter school well prepared for learning.
• The Education Department’s Indian Nations At Risk Task Force issues an exhaustive set of recommendations for improving the education of Native American students, including creation of an assistant secretary’s post within the department to focus on the subject.
• Hispanic leaders in Denver make overtures to black leaders to help bring an end to forced busing of children under the district’s decades-old desegregation lawsuit.
• Moving to resolve an issue raised by the Education Department’s civil-rights chief a year earlier, Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander declares that most college scholarships awarded on the basis of race are illegal.

A version of this article appeared in the January 08, 1992 edition of Education Week as Remembering 1991: The Year In Education

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S.64 - Education Council Act of 1991 102nd Congress (1991-1992)

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Summary: S.64 — 102nd Congress (1991-1992) All Information (Except Text)

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Shown Here: Conference report filed in House (06/12/1991)

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What you need to know about EDCOM II that aims to fix learning crisis

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This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

FACE-TO-FACE. Elementary students of the Pinyahan Elementary School in Quezon City return to their classroom as all public schools resume full face-to-face classes on November 2, 2022.

Jire Carreon/Rappler

MANILA, Philippines – A World Bank report revealed that 9 in 10 Filipino students aged 10 are struggling to read simple text. Education experts cited overworked teachers as among the reasons behind the Philippines’ high level of learning poverty.

The Second Congressional Commission on Education or EDCOM II, which was created through Republic Act (RA) 11899, aims to address education woes. It was created to conduct a national review of the country’s education sector after the COVID-19 pandemic had taken a toll on learning.

“Batas na po ang EDCOM II! Para iangat ang kalidad ng edukasyon, hindi na natin maaaring ipagpaliban ang pagpapatupad ng mga kinakailangang reporma,” Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, the bill’s sponsor and co-author, said in a tweet on July 26, 2022. The bill lapsed into law on July 23, 2022.

(EDCOM II is already a law! To improve the quality of education, we cannot delay the implementation of the learning reforms.)

What is EDCOM II?

According to its website , EDCOM II was created for a “comprehensive national assessment and evaluation of the performance of the Philippine education sector for the purpose of recommending transformative, concrete and targeted reforms in the sector with the end in view of making the Philippines globally competitive in both education and labor markets” from 2023 to 2025.

EDCOM II is the successor of EDCOM I, which was created on June 17, 1990 through a joint Resolution of the Eighth Philippine Congress.

It is being co-chaired by Gatchalian, Senator Chiz Escudero, Pasig City Lone District Representative Roman Romulo, and Baguio City Lone District Representative Mark Go. It is also composed of representatives from the private sector.

What are its functions?

According to RA 11899, EDCOM II has the following functions.

• Review, assess, and evaluate the formal and alternative learning systems of education, including continuing systems of education at all levels and the policies on licensure examinations conducted by the Philippine Regulation Commission, and the employment eligibility by the Civil Service Commission, and the competency assessment and certification by TESDA.
• Recommend the improvement in the harmonization of the policies and programs of the Department of Education, Commission on Higher Education, and TESDA.
• Formulate short-term and long-term policy and program recommendations that consist of specific, targeted, measurable, and time-bound solutions.
• Coordinate among departments and sectors concerned with human resource management and development.
• Approve the work plan for the conduct of the national review, assessment and harmonization tasks and the budget for the program of the Commission and all disbursements thereof, including compensation of all personnel.
• Hire and appoint employees and personnel on temporary and contractual basis.
• Hold hearings and receive testimonies, reports, and expert advice on the status of Philippine education, exhaust available options to identify problems, and consolidate coherent courses of actions and remedies.
• Summon by subpoena any public official or private person to testify before it, or require by subpoena duces tecum the production of necessary documents, as may be necessary.
• Secure from any department, bureau, office, or instrumentality of the government such assistance, including technical information, and preparation, and production of reports, and the submission of recommendations or plans, as may be required.
• Conduct multi-stakeholder consultations, using proper mechanisms, and guidance.
• Collaborate with emerging and innovative industries and services for the sharing of important information relative to their practices on specialized training or apprenticeship programs in line with RA 7686, or the “Dual Training System Act of 1994,” and other related laws, to prepare the learners, students, and newly-hired workforce to meet demands of 21st century skills and the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
• Review and upon recommendations of the technical secretariat or standing committees, or both, as it may deem appropriate.
• Report to the Congress its accomplishments on a periodic basis, its findings and recommendations on actions to be taken by Congress, the departments, and other government agencies concerned with education, and provide a final report at the end of the existence of the Commission. The report shall include a roadmap with clear key performance indicators and results framework to address learning crisis.
• Recommend additional legislation to further the objectives of this Act.
• Formulate the necessary rules and guidelines for the effective implementation of this Act.
• Exercise all other powers necessary to achieve the purposes of this Act.

Why is EDCOM II important?

The creation of EDCOM II would provide government education institutions a different perspective on the gravity of the problems and proposed solutions.

“Looking from the outside through an inside. The DepEd is a huge government body, and we want to create a separate independent body looking at the problems from the outside. The concept here is getting an independent body looking inside and getting experts to help that body to analyze the problems and look for solutions,” Gatchalian said in a Rappler interview last February.

In a meeting with Senators on April 13, Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte presented the DepEd’s priority areas to resolve the learning crisis, including the launch of the National Education Portal, a recalibrated National Learning Recovery Plan (NLRP), and the incoming conduct of the National Learning Camp (NLC).

“In order to ensure quality, accessible, relevant, and liberating basic education for our learners, we need to strengthen and sustain our collective efforts as a nation. We still have a long way to go. We need to be resilient. We need to do more,” Duterte said. – Rappler.com

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the Learning Generation

Education and skills are essential for the realization of individual potential, national economic growth, social development and the fostering of global citizenship. in the coming decades, as technology, demographic change and globalization reshape the world we live in, they will become ever more important..

Economies will rise or fall depending more on their intellectual resources than their physical resources. The valuation of companies will depend more on human capital than physical capital. The pathway to growth for developing economies will depend less on traditional forms of export-led growth and more on education-led growth.

And yet the world today is facing a global learning crisis. If current trends continue, by 2030 – the date the international community has set for attaining quality secondary education for all – less than 10 percent of young people in low-income countries will be on track to gain basic secondary level skills. The costs of this learning crisis – unemployment, poverty, inequality and instability – could undermine the very fabric of our economies and societies.

But there is a better vision for the future of global education and young people. Indeed, it is possible to ensure that all children and youth are in school and learning the skills they need to be successful in work and life.  Based on research from the Education Commission, this vision is achievable within a generation if all countries accelerate their progress to that of the world’s top 25 percent fastest improvers in education. This report proposes the largest expansion of educational opportunity in history and outlines the reforms and increased financial investment required to achieve it.

Why Invest Now and the Costs of Delay

Today’s generation of young people faces a radically changing world., half of the world's jobs – around 2 billion – are expected to disappear due to automation by 2030. 1 see for example frey, carl benedikt and michael a. osborne. 2013. “the future of employment: how susceptible are jobs to computerisation” oxford martin school at university of oxford: oxford. world bank. 2016. “world development report 2016: digital dividends.” world bank: washington, dc..

In some countries, up to 80 percent of today’s jobs could be lost. 2 World Bank Group. 2016. “ World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends .” New technologies that are disrupting industries and changing the nature of work will increase the demand for high-skilled labor and make many low- and medium-skilled jobs obsolete.

Young people in developing countries will face the greatest challenges in the years ahead. With many of the world’s low-skilled jobs most susceptible to automation, developing economies will be at greater risk of technology-induced unemployment. In the past, many developing economies achieved growth by moving farm workers into factories. In the future, new growth models will need to be found, but these will require higher levels of skills than developing economies are currently set to offer. Changing global demographics will exacerbate this challenge with the greatest population increases occurring in countries currently lagging furthest behind in education. By 2050, African countries will be home to a billion young people.

Already some 40 percent of employers globally are finding it difficult to recruit people with the skills they need. 3 ManpowerGroup. 2015. “Talent Shortage Survey 2015.” Manpower Group: Milwaukee.

If education in much of the world fails to keep up with the rising demand for skills, there will be major shortages of skilled workers in both developing and developed economies as well as large surpluses of workers with poor skills. This skills gap threatens to have far-reaching economic, social, and political repercussions. The growing skills gap will stunt global economic growth and reverse progress toward ending extreme poverty. Without action to give young people the education and skills they need to compete, more than a quarter of the population in low-income countries could still be living in extreme poverty in 2050.

The impact of poor education on health will be equally severe.

Projections suggest that by 2050, the number of lives lost each year because of a failure to provide adequate access to quality education would equal those lost today to HIV and malaria, two of the most deadly global diseases. By 2050, population growth would be at least 15 percent higher than if all children were learning – a critical factor in development as a whole.

If inequality in education persists, the implications for global stability are also dire.

Historical analysis shows that inequality fuels unrest and when educational inequality doubles, the probability of conflict more than doubles. Unrest is likely to be greatest where the gap between youth expectations and daily realities is widest. Population movements could further compound these pressures. Today, the number of people displaced by conflict is at an all-time high and migration from conflict, climate change, and economic strains is set to increase. The number of international migrants, many of whom will have been denied the opportunity to acquire skills, is estimated to grow to around 400 million people by 2050. With education critical to resilience and cohesion, the dearth of skills will increase vulnerability to shocks and the risks of instability across the world.

Where economic, technological, demographic, and geopolitical trends collide with weak education systems, the risks of instability, radicalization, and economic decline are at their greatest. If the world does not equip all young people with the skills they will need to participate in the future economy, the costs of inaction and delay could be irreparable.

The Unfolding Learning Crisis

Quality education is the most critical factor in closing the skills gap and one of the most important in determining a child’s future success., yet, education in many developing countries is not improving and children are instead falling dangerously behind..

Today, 263 million children and young people in the world are out of school, and the number of primary-aged children not in school is increasing. For those children who are in school, many are not actually learning. In low- and middle-income countries, only half of primary school children and little more than a quarter of secondary school children are learning basic skills. The Education Commission projects that if current trends continue, by 2030 over three-quarters of a billion young people in low- and middle-income countries will not be on track to acquire basic secondary-level skills. In low-income countries, only one out of 10 will be on track (see Figure 1).   Without urgent change, more than 1.5 billion adults will have no education beyond primary school in 2030.

Figure 1: A Global Learning Crisis: The expected learning outcomes of the cohort of children and youth who are in school in 2030

Source: Education Commission projections (2016)

The case for investing in education is indisputable. Education is a fundamental human right. It is critical for long-term economic growth and essential for the achievement of all of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. A dollar invested in an additional year of schooling, particularly for girls, generates earnings and health benefits of $10 in low-income countries and nearly $4 in lower middle-income countries (see Figure 2). Around one-third of the reductions in adult mortality since 1970 can be attributed to gains in educating girls and young women.

The value of education will only continue to increase because it is education that will determine whether the defining trends of this century – technological, economic, and demographic – will create opportunity or entrench inequality. Meeting the global challenges facing humanity today and in the decades to come will without exception depend on how countries improve their education systems.

Source: Jamison, Dean, and Marco Schäferhoff. 2016. “Estimating the Economic Returns of Education from a Health Perspective.” Background Paper for the Education Commission. SEEK Development.

Creating the Learning Generation