Summer Reading: Global Competition

Over the past few weeks, I have given several speeches that focus on the 3 E’s. I have been giving this speech for several years. The 3 E’s refer to education driving employment which drives a state and national economy. As part of my speech, I focus on the leadership of Kentucky in pushing the 3 E’s through Senate Bill 1 (2009). For summer reading, I am recommending that educators look closely at several publications. Jim Clifton wrote a book a few years ago entitled The Coming Jobs War. Also, Valerie Hannon and others have written an excellent book called Learning a Living. Finally, I recommend a McKinsey Center for Government report entitled Education to Employment: Designing a System that Works. All three of these publications provide excellent insight into the global competition for jobs and the potential impact on not only the U.S. economy but the global economy.

Jim Clifton offers several interesting statistics. There are 7 billion people on earth. More than 5 billion are age 15 or older. More than 3 billion people say they must work or want to work. Currently there are only 1.2 billion full-time, formal jobs. That means there is a shortfall of 1.8 billion jobs. Readers can see evidence of this with the global unemployment rate of more than 8 percent and the unemployment rates for 18-24 year olds in European countries (more than 25 percent in some countries).  Clifton talks additionally about the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which is currently at $60 trillion. The U.S. has one-fourth of the GDP with a national GDP of more than $15 trillion. With projected population and economic growth, the world’s GDP will grow to $140 trillion. This offers enormous opportunities for the nations who seek economic growth. However, a key fundamental for economic growth is education and the creation of jobs. Clifton sums it up very well: “If countries fail at creating jobs, their societies will fall apart.”

In Hannon’s book (Learning a Living), and in the McKinsey report, there are many excellent U.S. and international examples of specific strategies states and nations are implementing to ensure education and job creation. In Kentucky, we have programs like Toyota Advanced Manufacturing and similar initiatives by UPS, Ford and GE.

At a recent global conference I attended, the discussion was lively around an interesting topic: Will this century be the “American” or “Asian” century?  Certainly, the last century was the American century, with tremendous economic leadership from the U.S. However, for the fastest growing economies, we have to look to China, India, and other Asian countries. It is important that the U.S. and Kentucky focus on the 3 E’s in order to remain competitive. I encourage readers to take the summer and read the publications I mentioned. I will return to this theme throughout the fall as Kentucky progresses on our journey to improve the 3 E’s.

Partnering with the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce on the Three “Es”

This week, Kentucky Chamber of Commerce President Dave Adkisson and I started a 10-city tour to promote education improvement in Kentucky. The theme of our tour is that education drives employment, and employment drives the economy.

The future of Kentucky depends heavily on our ability to improve the educational attainment and outcomes for ALL Kentucky children. My comments for the first stop on the tour – Paducah -- may be found here. These comments focus on two major requests for local Chamber of Commerce members:


1. As the state implements more rigorous standards, we will need business and community leaders to clearly support the need for increased rigor and expectations of college and career readiness for all Kentucky children. There will be push-back that the standards are too rigorous and the assessments are too rigorous for Kentucky children and teachers. We must stand united in our expectations.


2. Schools alone cannot accomplish college and career readiness for all Kentucky children. Business and community leader involvement is specifically requested for Operation Preparation. This program is set for March 12-16, 201,2 and every 8th- and 10th-grade Kentucky student will meet with an adult volunteer who will advise the student on preparation for college and career. The Kentucky Department of Education will provide training and resources for volunteers. Since there are almost 50,000 8th graders and over 45,000 10th graders, we will need many adult volunteers.



My thanks to Dave Adkisson and the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce for their support of education. Education is the number-one item on the chamber’s legislative agenda and its strategic plan.

In our visits, we will also talk to local editorial boards and media outlets, and we hope to see extensive coverage of the college- and career-ready expectations and Operation Preparation.

An Interesting, Interconnected Week

This week was a very interesting week. Governor Beshear dropped in to visit with the Transforming Education in Kentucky (TEK) task force. His message was very clear and visionary. He recharged the task force with developing recommendations that will refocus our efforts in Kentucky to help prepare more children for the challenges they will face.

This charge is clear. ALL students must be prepared for college and career through a more challenging and rigorous education. After his message, the task force heard from our career and technical education (CTE) staff about the excellent work going on in this program. The message was clear that the current CTE program is not your father’s shop class anymore. The program integrates academics and technical skills to prepare students for jobs of the 21st century.

Gene Bottoms of the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) delivered an excellent presentation on how to ensure more students graduate from high school with college- and career-ready skills. His presentation also included several excellent policy recommendations that the task force will certainly be reviewing for possible inclusion in the final report.

Also, this week, First Lady Jane Beshear was honored by the SREB for her leadership with the Graduate Kentucky Project. And, I had the honor to present at the Chamber of Commerce Economic Summit. All of these events are very much related.

I have begun to focus on the “Three Es.” Education, employment and the economy are tightly linked, and all of the events this week showed that linkage very clearly. A report I received in an e-mail from the Alliance for Excellent Education pulled it all together. Excerpts from the report are below, and I encourage readers to review the information for the nation and for our largest urban system – Louisville/Jefferson County.

Excerpts from the article:

In the nation's forty-five largest metropolitan areas, students of color made up a sizable portion of the estimated 600,000 students who dropped out from the Class of 2008: 113,600 African American, 200,000 Latino, 3,750 American Indian, and 30,800 Asian American1 students are estimated to have dropped out from this class.

Cutting the number of these dropouts in half would likely produce vast economic benefits by boosting the spending power of these communities of color and spurring job and economic growth in these regions. Below, see the likely contributions that these “new graduates” would make to their regional economies.
· All told, the students of color within this one class of new graduates could produce enormous benefits for their local economies:
· Together, their additional spending would likely generate 17,450 new jobs and boost the gross regional products of these areas by as much as $3.1 billion by the time they reach the midpoint of their careers.
· As a result of their increased wages and higher levels of spending, state and local tax revenues within these regions would likely grow by as much as $249.7 million during an average year.
· The regions would likely see increased human capital, with 48 percent of these new graduates likely continuing on to pursue some type of postsecondary education after earning a high school diploma.

To view the full report, visit http://all4ed.org/publication_material/EconMSAsoc.