Education beyond high school is essential for Americans to prosper in the 21^st century. Looking into the past, we have seen the majority of those earning a college degree or other postsecondary credential achieve higher earnings, quality of life, civic engagement, and other positive outcomes. Looking ahead, we see a new future where the vast majority of jobs will require some level of postsecondary education. From either perspective, it’s clear that “college for all” should become our national aspiration. The question is how best to achieve that goal.

Many of the success stories that produced these good outcomes for individuals and our country are the result of Americans who got their postsecondary education and training for free in the 1940s, 50s, 60s and 70s. The Rice Institute, now Rice University in Texas, was free to its students until the 1960s. SUNY and CUNY in New York State were virtually free until the 1980s. The same was true for the University of California, the California State Universities, and the California Community Colleges. Many states made sure that the returning World War II veterans and the next two generations had access to a free postsecondary education.

And it shouldn’t be a surprise that our nation’s economy boomed, along with America’s civic health. In fact, when President Franklin Roosevelt signed the GI Bill in 1944 and President Eisenhower signed the National Defense Student Loan legislation in 1958, millions of veterans, women, and minorities came to college because they could afford it and knew their education beyond high school would make a significant difference in their future livelihood. They bought cars, took out home loans, worked hard, and advanced in their careers. They weren’t burdened by enormous college debt. At the same time, trust in one another and key institutions, as well as civic habits of volunteering, voting and charitable giving, were also on the rise among this Greatest Generation. During this era, the U.S. was first in the world for its college graduates, outpacing Germany, the U.K., and other OECD countries.

By the new century, our educational advantage had clearly slipped. President Bush’s higher education commission highlighted the fact that after decades of progress, other countries were outpacing the United States in educating more of their citizens to advanced levels. President Obama—who also recognized that we had lost our way, that we were 12^th in the world in higher education attainment, and that we had mounting student debt exceeding the ability of students to pay off their loans—pointed to a North Star for America to regain its place by making a college education within reach for all hardworking students.

During that same time, following his service as county mayor of Knoxville and implementing the Knoxville Promise, Gov. Bill Haslam (R-Tenn.) launched the Tennessee Promise–a commitment that every high school graduate could obtain at least a free community college education. Since then, Tennessee has added Tennessee Reconnect for adults to obtain a free postsecondary education in fields to help grow their regional economies across the state. Tennessee has some early outcomes of success, as do many other Promise programs across our nation.

OECD now reports that the United States is 10^th in the world in postsecondary attainment; we’re making progress, but not nearly fast enough to regain first place.

Today, escalating college costs, stagnant college graduation rates, and the growing $1.5 trillion in college debt has been put on the backs of our nation’s students and families. Far too many are dimming their hopes for an affordable, quality education beyond high school.

These students need help, and local community and state leaders have stepped up to the challenge in the absence of a federal redesign. To date, these leaders have established more than 200 tuition-free, college Promise programs, including governors and legislatures in 23 states that have enacted variations of free community college.

We shouldn’t stop here, but must continue to advance these programs coast to coast. Imagine making the first two years of college free for every American willing to put in the effort, work hard, and help grow the economy through their skills and talents. And imagine the impact of more Americans giving back to their communities and country.

Today, the need for a college education is not just for young people in the decade following high school graduation, as it was for many Baby Boomers and Generation Xers. Acquiring a postsecondary education and continuous learning will be a basic necessity for the millions of Americans whose jobs will increasingly disappear in the global economy, including from robotics and artificial intelligence. Even many of Peter Thiel’s chosen young entrepreneurs who were famously encouraged to drop out of college and start their own businesses returned to postsecondary education to develop new skills and build on their careers.

We must also recognize that the “college for all” goal cannot be narrowly defined to a four-year degree. Rather, postsecondary education can also lead to certificates and open doors to thousands of well-paying jobs, including engine-maintenance technicians, plumbers, electricians, dental hygienists, and radiologic technicians that will move them and our economy forward.

Of course, a percentage of jobs will go to doctors, lawyers, and entrepreneurs who will earn advanced degrees, but even they will be displaced or replaced if they don’t keep up their skills and credentials going forward. New York University just made medical education tuition-free for its students. States and localities should continue to innovate with different models to expand such opportunity beyond this smaller pool.

Various models of free college are sweeping the country in our local communities and states, led by governors and mayors from both parties collaborating with leaders in chambers of commerce, community foundations, and nonprofit organizations.

We can fulfill President Obama’s vision to lead the world in educating our people by accelerating the creative initiatives of Gov. Haslam and the thousands of others who know that the nation’s investment in education beyond high school will provide a remarkable return that will drive our nation forward. Given the challenges facing our economy and democracy, we don’t have a moment to lose.

       

Former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sits down with young men from Chicago CRED (Creating Real Economic Diversity) to discuss the steps they have taken to disrupt the cycle of gun violence in their community and transition into the legal economy.

Also in this episode, meet David M. Rubenstein Fellow Randall Akee in a recent edition of our Coffee Break segment.

Related content:

Disrupting the cycle of gun violence: A candid discussion with young Chicago residents

Solutions to Chicago’s youth violence crisis

—

Thanks to audio producer Gaston Reboredo with assistance from Mark Hoelscher, and to producers Brennan Hoban and Chris McKenna. Additional support comes from Jessica Pavone, Eric Abalahin, Rebecca Viser, our intern Steven Lee, Camilo Ramirez, and David Nassar.

Subscribe to Brookings podcasts here or on Apple Podcasts, send feedback email to BCP@Brookings.edu, and follow us and tweet us at @policypodcasts on Twitter.

The Brookings Cafeteria is a part of the Brookings Podcast Network.

       

The lives of young people are disrupted, traumatized, and cut short by gun violence every single day in the United States. Despite progress being made in some cities to reduce gun violence, communities in Chicago have recently endured record numbers of homicides and shootings. Over 71 percent of the city’s violent crime was confined to just 15 of Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods, and nearly 80 percent of homicide victims were African-American. These trends are consistent with evidence demonstrating that young men living in poverty are disproportionately likely to be involved with gun violence and other illegal activity.  As communities deal with these issues, many nonprofit programs, such as Chicago CRED (Creating Real Economic Diversity), have stepped in to help guide at-risk young adults.

On March 9, Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow and former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan convened a panel of young people from Chicago CRED to discuss their experiences, including problems they’ve faced and challenges they’ve overcome in dealing with gun violence in their communities. The discussion centered around the personal impact of programs that focus on mentorship, job training, and creating a sustainable skill set for long-term personal and professional growth. What are the most effective means for improving prosperity and reducing violence to positively impact the lives of young people in at-risk communities? How can mentorship and job-training programs be used as a tool to break the cycle of gun violence?

After the session, speakers took audience questions.

       

On Dec. 6, Brookings hosted Saria Samakie, in conversation with Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow and former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Samakie and Duncan candidly discussed what it is like to be a Syrian refugee in America today. What were some of the fierce challenges that Samakie—and no doubt countless other refugees—experienced during his journey? What does he make of life as an American university student? And what would he like all Americans to know about his country and his story?

       

This election taught me two things. The first is obvious: We live in a deeply divided nation. The second, while subtle, is incredibly important: The election was a massive cry for help. People across the country–on both sides of the political spectrum–feel they have been left behind and are fearful their basic needs will continue to go unanswered. Rhetoric may win votes, but it doesn’t put food on the table. There’s been much discussion of how we’re divided by race and class, but I believe a huge driver of our nation’s current challenges is created by educational inequity.

The persistent lack of access to world-class educational resources and technology in far too many communities is at the heart of this issue. This inequality breeds more than just subpar test scores. It snowballs to create economic immobility, stranding people without the training necessary to earn well-paying jobs. As the job landscape evolves–STEM jobs are growing 70 percent faster than non-STEM jobs–we need to create opportunities for people to develop 21^st-century skills and level the playing field for all demographics.

The strong reactions to new U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s confirmation hearing last month illustrates the importance of education to all factions of our nation. We need to be prepared to find a solution that provides opportunity for all Americans and bolsters our economy. I urge policymakers to make technology education a national priority.

By 2020, demand for skilled technologists will exceed the number of qualified applicants by 1 million, leaving our country vulnerable in key areas such as technological innovation, economic development, and cybersecurity. Our inability to resolve the digital skills shortage is bleeding the U.S. economy of approximately $1 trillion annually.

When compared to 17 other industrial countries, U.S. workers ranked last in “problem solving in technology-rich environments.” If we expect to compete in a global economy that demands increasingly higher skills, we need to concentrate on closing the digital divide. The reversal must begin in K-12, where currently only one in four schools teach computer programming.

The impact of this skills gap is easy to see across local economies. Georgetown University predicts there will be an estimated 228,000 STEM-related jobs in Michigan by 2018, but as Detroit public schools rank the lowest among big-city districts in math—with only 4 percent of eighth graders scoring proficient or better—the question lingers: Who will fill those roles?

Rhode Island is home to a number of large companies, including Hasbro, Amica Mutual Insurance, CVS Pharmacy, and FM Global. While these companies actively seek skilled workers to fill technical roles, state unemployment remains above the national average. This disparity can be hard to understand, until you realize the unemployed population is not equipped with the hard skills needed to succeed in these types of positions. Until things change in education, this gap will continue to grow. In 2015, when unemployment was at 6.1 percent, just 42 students in the entire state took the AP Computer Science exam. Through Computer Science for Rhode Island, Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo has set forward an ambitious plan to put computer science in every school, but we need support at the federal level to accelerate such state efforts.

We’re doing students a disservice by not placing a heavier focus on producing STEM graduates, who are more sought after than any other major, and stand to earn higher initial salaries than their peers. Nationwide, there are more than 512,000 open computing jobs, but the number of computer science students that graduated into the workforce last year account for less than 10 percent of that need. Of course, we wouldn’t expect new graduates to fill all job vacancies in a healthy labor market—as many open positions will require more experience—but filling less than 10 percent is indicative of demand for talent far outstripping supply. It’s clear our educational institutions are not producing enough workers to keep up with the demand that rapid innovation has imposed on our economy.

As such, we must also provide training resources that move at the ever-increasing speed of technology to those in higher education and the workplace. The TechHire initiative, a federal campaign focused on building tech talent pipelines in communities across the United States, is an important step in this direction. While it isn’t the singular solution, the program serves as a model for the kind of public-private partnerships that are suited to address the massive shortfall in technical talent. I encourage the incoming administration to facilitate efforts of employers who need skilled workers, people who need the training to get and keep a well-paying job, and training providers that offer tools to drive technology skills development and mastery. This is a place where everyone’s interest align—from government to the private sector to schools nationwide—and the Education Department is primed to play a leadership role in creating good jobs here in the U.S.

In my current role with Emerson Collective, we’re working to create jobs on the south and west sides of Chicago as a means to reduce the epidemic of violence that has engulfed the city. For example, through Emerson’s support of Chicago CRED, we are working to create opportunity for young men in Chicago to gain the skills and experiences they need to enter the work force and be successful. Our goal is to create concrete opportunities that get people off the streets and into jobs in the legal economy. People who have both hope and concrete opportunities don’t pick up guns.

To be successful in this endeavor, we need strong partners in the private sector. I joined the board at Pluralsight, a company that aims to democratize technology learning by addressing the skills gap for both individuals and corporations, for this exact reason. Our efforts at Emerson could be multiplied many times over by thoughtful and articulate policy from the White House that connects public and private efforts to provide underserved groups with tech skills training that will lead to long-term job placement.

The new administration is inheriting the challenge of educational inequality and is tasked with adopting a deliberate and comprehensive position on technology education that effectively unites the government, education, and technology sectors. This issue impacts everyone in the country, and too much is at stake for it to remain in the shadows of partisan issues. Education can be the thing that heals the painful divide in this nation, so long as we work together to map its future.

As people have been pushed to the margins of society, it has become more difficult to climb the economic ladder. Providing opportunity in the form of skills development will encourage economic mobility, strengthen families, keep good jobs in America, bolster our democracy, and replace the deep fear felt across the nation with hope. It’s our collective responsibility to help close the technology skills gap and empower our students and professionals to become the creators and problem-solvers we need to fuel the U.S. economy in today’s technology-driven world.

       

The federal government has been involved in public schools for decades. Yet, the relationship between the federal government and the states has evolved and recalibrated regularly over that period.

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election is widely viewed as a signal of change for the federal government’s role in American society generally, and education in particular. Following on the heels of the recent enactment of the new Every Student Succeeds Act in December of 2015, which once again rewrote the rules of the federal government’s role in the nation’s schools, the future of federal education policy is now fluid and uncertain.

On January 4, the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings hosted a public forum examining the history and future of federal education policy. The event, marking the culmination of the Memos to the President on the Future of Education Policy series, convened leaders and scholars with a variety of perspectives to discuss the federal government’s involvement with public schools.

       

Schools of education are providing one of the most important services in America today, training our future teachers who will prepare our children to succeed in work and in life. No other responsibility is more directly linked to our future.

The world’s strongest economy relies on a skilled and creative workforce. The world’s oldest democracy relies on an informed citizenry. We all know that teaching is a complex and challenging profession on a par with medicine, law, and engineering. Like those other fields, teachers save lives, advance the cause of justice and build stronger societies.

Yet, the system we have for training teachers lacks rigor, is out of step with the times, and is given to extreme grade inflation that leaves teachers unprepared and their future students at risk. According to a 2014 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), many of our biggest teacher training programs are twice as likely to graduate students with honors than other programs in the same academic settings.

The NCTQ report looked at more than 500 institutions of higher education, which annually graduate more than half of the country’s new teachers. It found that just 30 percent of all students graduate with honors compared to 44 percent of education majors. In 51 of these institutions, the number of education majors graduating with honors is twice as high as the other programs at the same schools.

For example, at Cedar Crest College in Pennsylvania, 80 percent of the education students graduated with honors compared to 26 percent of all students, a gap of 54 points. At the University of Louisville in Kentucky, the gap is 49 points. At North Carolina Central University, the gap is 46 points. At Penn State in Harrisburg, the gap is 44 points. At Delaware State it’s 43 points. There are dozens of other examples of gaps in the 30’s and 20’s and hundreds in the teens.

There can only be two explanations for this unsettling phenomenon: either your teacher training programs are attracting an unusually gifted group of students or the standard for honors in education is too low. We know from other studies that it is not the first explanation.

The NCTQ report also looks at rigor and concludes that many of our teacher training programs are simply not giving our future teachers the training they need. Assignments are often vague and grading the results is extremely subjective. Too often, teachers in training are asked to share their philosophy about teaching certain kinds of kids but they are not asked to show specifics.

On the other hand, good teacher training programs challenge students with specific assignments. Say, for example, a student is asked to develop a lesson plan for fifth graders based on a specific standard and a specific curriculum, and adapted for a child with dyslexia. The results are much easier to evaluate.

Hunter College-CUNY, for example, requires their teacher candidates to record themselves teaching on video and then later document and analyze their own instruction; this allows professors to see both the instruction choices and the candidates’ analysis of their work. Doing so creates an environment of constant feedback and improvement.

In fact, at 62 of the institutions studied by NCTQ, the honors gap is reversed: a smaller proportion of teachers receive honors than do other students across campus.

There are other promising signs that your sector is trying to improve. Deans for Impact is a new organization committed to holding future teachers to a high standard, by supporting school leaders who are data-driven and outcomes-focused.

Seven years ago, I spoke at Columbia University’s Teacher College and challenged the sector to step up, to create revolutionary change. I applaud the positive steps some of you have taken in that direction but systemic change has yet to happen.

I’ve talked to thousands of teachers throughout my career and I can almost count on one hand the ones who said they were ready to teach on day one. Of course, there’s a learning curve in every career and a certain amount of on-the-job training is expected. But given the typical response, teacher preparation programs are not living up to their responsibility to train teachers, effectively costing students years of learning over their K-12 careers.

Lowering our expectations not only does a disservice to the teaching candidates in these programs, but also to the students they’ll soon teach. We owe it to them to challenge our future teachers. We should ensure that they’re held to high standards like engineering, business, and medical students, and we should only be giving the best grades to those teacher candidates who are most prepared for the classroom. The path to change begins with the will to change. And that starts with you.

       

On July 27, Governance Studies at Brookings hosted a discussion featuring former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and state education leaders concerning the future of accountability under ESSA. Questions they explored included: What can states do to alleviate the tension of this policy transition? How is this transition similar to or different from past education reforms, and what lessons can be learned from those past efforts? And most importantly, what models of accountability will best serve students, teachers, and school systems?

       

Arne Duncan, former U.S. secretary of education during the Obama administration and now a nonresident senior fellow with the Brown Center on Education Policy, discusses the crisis of youth violence in Chicago and solutions that strengthen schools and encourage more opportunities for those who are marginalized to make a living in the legal economy.

“The best thing we can do is create hope, opportunity and jobs particularly on the South and West side for young and black men who have been disenfranchised, who have been on the streets. If we can give them some chances to earn a living in a legal economy not selling drugs and not on street corners, I think we have a chance to do something pretty significant here,” Duncan says. “My fundamental belief is that the police cannot solve this on their own we have to create opportunities for young people in communities who have been marginalized for far too long.”

Also in this episode, Bruce Katz, the Centennial Scholar, who discusses how European cities are addressing the refugee crisis in a new segment from our Refugee Series.

Thanks to audio engineer and producer Zack Kulzer, with editing help from Mark Hoelscher, plus thanks to Carisa Nietsche, Bill Finan, Jessica Pavone, Eric Abalahin, Rebecca Viser, and our intern Sara Abdel-Rahim.

Subscribe to the Brookings Cafeteria on iTunes, listen in all the usual places, and send feedback email to BCP@Brookings.edu 

       

On April 26, Governance Studies at Brookings hosted a forum to examine charter schools in America. This event, the seventh in the A. Alfred Taubman Forum on Public Policy series, convened leaders from various perspectives to explore the role, effectiveness, and future of charter schools in the U.S. education system.

Join the conversation on Twitter at #CharterSchools and @BrookingsGov