For several years the National Association of System Heads (NASH), with assistance from the Education Trust and financial support from the Pew Charitable Trusts, has drawn together university system and state school system CEOs for intensive, candid and action-oriented conversations about how best to improve student achievement K-12 through college. This statement was drafted during the summer 1998 meeting of education leaders from seven states.

It is intended to summarize the participants’ discussions and to articulate action plans for the years ahead.

The Situation

From the beginning, the participants have been determined that our efforts be informed—indeed, driven—by honest assessment of the facts concerning the performance of our schools and their students. Consequently, we have carefully reviewed national data about student achievement and educational practice. From these data we conclude the following:

• Throughout our education system from kindergarten through college, and for all students, neither performance nor persistence is at levels we want and need. This is especially true for low-income and minority students, but the problem of underachievement is by no means limited to them.

• Many of our students are learning at low levels not because there is something inherently wrong with them, but because we are failing to teach all students at high levels. At all levels of education, we teach different students different things and their teachers are differently qualified. Low-income and minority students in particular are more likely to be enrolled in less challenging curricula, their teachers are more likely to be underqualified, and their schools are more likely to suffer from inadequate instructional resources. Parents and other community stakeholders too often fail to help establish and maintain supportive academic environments that make high performance by all students a realistic expectation.

• Among all these problems, the most damaging is the assignment of underqualified teachers. The difference in student performances achieved by effective and ineffective teachers is frequently large, even dramatic—as much as an extra grade level within a single school year.

• Though some would have us believe otherwise, it is very clear that we can correct these patterns if we can muster the will and the courage to make bold changes in the way we conduct the educational process. There is a growing number of schools and colleges around the country whose successes show what needs to be done and demonstrate that it can be done. In El Paso, Texas, for example, a five-year collaboration between higher education, K-12, and community leaders has raised academic performance for all students and reduced the minority achievement gap by about two-thirds.

A Universal Goal

We believe that at the core of the lessons taught by the facts of our situation is one simple idea that leads directly to a universal goal:

Our nation is no longer well served by an education system that prepares a few to attend college to develop their minds for learned pursuits while the rest are expected only to build their muscles for useful labor. In the twenty-first century, all students must meet higher achievement standards in elementary, secondary, and post-secondary schools and thus be better prepared to meet the challenges of work and citizenship.

The word "all" in that goal is especially important. It reflects our conviction that bringing every student to a high level of performance is both necessary and feasible. It is necessary because today’s complex knowledge-dependent society and economy demand a solid foundation of basic knowledge and skills in all citizens. We know it is feasible because it is already being done in some schools by some teachers. Our task is to make such accomplishments the rule rather than the exception.

It appears that some education and political leaders lag behind America’s families in their understanding of this simple idea. In survey after survey parents say that access to and success in higher education is critically important to them and their children. And their children seem to agree. Among the high school graduates of the class of ’92, over 70% entered postsecondary education within two years of graduation. (Others will surely enter later.) Unfortunately, however, only about half were actually prepared for college.

By the time the students now in our elementary schools graduate from high school, college attendance will probably be near universal. We must commit ourselves to ensuring that preparation for college is equally universal, by setting high standards for all students and by ensuring that all students are placed in a competitive curriculum aligned with those standards. And our insistence on high standards must continue through college. In other words, what we have traditionally regarded as the ceiling must now become the floor.

Our Commitment

As we considered the respective roles of elementary, secondary and postsecondary institutions in moving us toward the universal goal, we became convinced that achieving the goal will require four interlocking and equally important commitments on the part of our institutions. There are two for elementary and secondary schools and two for colleges and universities. They can be represented as the corners of a figure we have dubbed "The K-16 Square."

These commitments demonstrate the inseparable connections among the elementary, secondary and postsecondary sectors of the education system in addressing the problem at hand. Commitments A and C, for example, imply that our K-12 sector should guarantee, by a date certain, that all of its graduates are prepared for college. They also imply that, by the same time, our colleges should cease to admit students who are not college ready. The implications of Commitments B and D are equally stark. To ensure that all K-12 students are taught by teachers well equipped to prepare them to meet high standards, our school systems must cease employing ineffective and underqualified teachers. We cannot expect students to meet high standards that their teachers themselves are unable to meet, or are underprepared to help their students meet. Similarly, colleges and universities must cease graduating underprepared teachers.

It should be noted that the K-16 Square reflects no intrinsic hierarchy. Any of its four commitments can be placed at the top. Rather, it represents four interconnected and equally important goals, all of them bold and ambitious but, in our opinion, absolutely achievable.

It should also be noted that strong interaction among sectors of the education system is crucial. Change in one sector cannot be accomplished without change in the others. For example, the standards for A must be made congruent with the standards for C. Likewise, the standards for D must be congruent with the standards for B. Commitments B and C are, in effect, the enforcement mechanisms for A and D.

Finally, although the K-16 Square is centered on the interface between secondary and postsecondary education, it is obvious that our commitments on both sides of that interface should be essentially the same. For example, colleges must ensure that all students meet high standards and accept only professors who can bring all student performance to high standards. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander! Our conversations and commitments this year were focused on how elementary and secondary schools working together with colleges and universities can ensure that high school graduates are prepared to succeed in college. There remains the question of how both sets of institutions can work together to ensure that college graduates are prepared to succeed in life. That is a discussion for another time. Nevertheless, we believe that these two goals are inextricably linked, and that the commitments expressed in the K-16 Square constitute powerful first steps toward the development of very different ways of approaching teaching and learning in higher education generally.

We mentioned above "a date certain." Goals should be accompanied by timetables. We recognize that the socioeconomic and political circumstances of every state are different, and that they may change with time, sometimes suddenly and unexpectedly. We understand that each state will have to establish its own timetable for achieving the universal goal and for meeting the four commitments. We think timetables should be set soon by every engaged state. We considered what might be a reasonable time by which a significant number of states could be expected to achieve the universal goal and meet the four commitments of the K-16 Square. We concluded that perhaps a third of the states should be able to do so by the year 2010. (That is, not coincidentally, approximately the number of states represented at the NASH/Education Trust State Systems K-16 working conference following the Aspen meeting.) With the example of these leading states before them, the trailing two-thirds of the states should be able to achieve the universal goal and meet the K-16 Square commitments by 2020.

Next Questions

The universal goal and the four commitments we have presented here raise many questions about how we should pursue them. Each state represented at our gathering, and each state active in the larger K-16 movement, will have to define its own questions and seek its own answers to them. Nevertheless, it might be useful to list a few of the relevant questions here as we see them. For example:

• How will we decide how high is high enough? If the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college-level work are at least one critical benchmark, what process can we use to come to agreement across postsecondary institutions on that knowledge set?

• What do we need to do to ensure that college admissions and placement policies reinforce the K-12 standards?

• How will we decide what knowledge and skills teachers need to be able to bring their students to high standards?

• Can we be clear about our goals for students preparing to become teachers without also being clear about our goals for students preparing for other careers? Shouldn’t we then establish and enforce ambitious goals for all college and university students?

• Regarding all our work, how can we avoid unilateral decisionmaking? That is, how can we make sure that higher education is not the sole arbiter of an adequate K-12 exit standard and K-12 is not the sole arbiter of adequate teacher preparation?

Answers to these questions and other questions, as well as associated timelines, will vary from state to state because our circumstances vary. Some of us are just starting down the path to standards-based reform, while others have been traveling it for many years. In some of our states postsecondary education is accepted as a goal for almost everyone, while in others that notion remains novel. Finally, and perhaps most important, some of us have already created K-16 partnerships to mount and sustain this work, while others are just now doing so.

Being Publicly Accountable

The agenda we have outlined here is not a private agenda shared by a few educational institutions in a few states. At least it ought not to be. It is, or ought to be, a very public agenda, a national agenda. Believing this, we agreed to add another to the four commitments of the K-16 Square. We commit to undertake efforts during the coming year to begin a process of mustering the public support and political will and courage it will take to follow this path consistently and persistently for a decade and more!

As we start down that path, one thing is very clear at the outset: No proper public debate and action on this agenda can occur without accurate and comprehensive information about the performance of schools, colleges, universities and their students, publicly available and widely shared. No physician can be expected to deal with a disease about which he/she knows little or nothing. We started our work with a careful look at reliable data about where we are in comparison to where we need to be in the twenty-first century. We believe that anyone who becomes engaged with this issue has an obligation to do the same. For our part, we are committed to sharing our own data in a way that will enable the communities we serve to evaluate this agenda and monitor our progress.

Epilogue

We do not underestimate the practical difficulties and impediments that will confront us as we strive to achieve the universal goal and to meet the commitments we have presented here. Nor do we underestimate the risks to all involved, both institutional and personal. While our dedication to achieving the goal and meeting the commitments is, for the moment, ours alone, we hope others will be moved to join us.

List of signatories:

Richard C. Atkinson, President, University of California
Robert Bartman, Commissioner of Education, Missouri
Molly Broad, President, University of North Carolina
William M. Bulger, President, University of Massachusetts
Charles I. Bunting, Chancellor, Vermont State Colleges
Douglas Christensen, Commissioner of Education, Nebraska
Wilmer S. Cody, Commissioner, Kentucky Department of Education
Joseph W. Cox, Chancellor, The Oregon University System
William H. Cunningham, Chancellor, The University of Texas System
Gordan K. Davies, President, Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education
David Driscoll, Commissioner of Education, Massachusetts
Delaine Eastin, California State Superintendent
Mathew Goldstein, Chancellor, City University of New York
Nacy Grasmick, Superintendent of Schools, Maryland
Donald Langenberg, Chancellor, University System of Maryland
Charles W. Manning, Chancellor, University System of West Virginia
Henry R. Marockie, State Superintendent, West Virginia Department of Education
Glenn W. McGee, Superintendent of Education, Illinois
Richard Mills, Commissioner of Education, New York
Jane Nichols, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, University and Community College System of Nevada
Manuel Pacheco, President, University of Missouri
Stephen R. Portch, Chancellor, University System of Georgia
Charles B. Reed, Chancellor, California State University
John W. Ryan, Chancellor, State University of New York
Keith Sanders, Executive Director, Illinois Board of Higher Education 
Ted Sanders, President, Southern Illinois University
Dennis Smith, President, University of Nebraska
Kala M. Stroup, Missouri Commissioner of Higher Education
Michael Ward, North Carolina State Superintendent