Global Competition

We are living on a planet where the technological advances have reduced the relative distances between places. To meet the realities of this 21st century global economy and maintain America’s leadership place into the future, we need to prepare our students to be able to compete not only nationally, but also with students from all across the globe for the jobs of tomorrow.
“We can call globalization at the changing relationship between governments and big businesses,” said David Rothkopf, a former senior Department of Commerce official in the Clinton administration and now a private strategic consultant. “But what is going on today is a much broader, much more profound phenomenon.” It is not simply about how governments, businesses, and people communicate, not just about the interaction of organizations, but is about the creation of completely new social, political, and business models.
Political changes, like the creation of the European Union, technological changes, like the introduction of fiber optic cables to Asia as well as economic changes, like the admission of China into the World Trade Organization in 2001, have increased the demand for work forces to have better skills, increasing the competition for the best jobs. Jobs that once were completed by people are now being automated and outsourced. The world’s knowledge and innovated economy favors workers who have better education or training, strong fundamental skills in math and reading, and the ability to solve unfamiliar problems and communicate effectively.
Recent research suggests that the global economy is evolving and intensifying at a stunning pace. “Globalization is happening faster than people think,” said Vivek Wadhwa, Wertheim Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Labor and Work life program and Duke University Executive in Residence. His recent research shows that companies are no longer just outsourcing production but are farming out innovation as well. “Having India and China conduct such sophisticated research and participate in drug discovery was unimaginable even five years ago,” he said.
Education is a tremendously important lever for ensuring competitiveness and prosperity in the age of globalization, albeit not the only one. Recent economic studies show that high skills lead to better wages, more equitable distributions of income, and substantial gains in economic productivity. The race is on among nations to create knowledge fueled innovated economies. In Singapore, Germany, China, Brazil, Korea, and other countries around the world, educational improvement is viewed as a critical part of this mission.
According to a report by the National Governors Association, called Benchmarking for success: Ensuring U.S. Students Received a World-Class Education, “Around the globe, governments are eagerly comparing their educational outcomes to the best in the world.” The goal is not just to see how they rank, but rather to identify and learn from top performers and rapid improvers—from nations and states that offer ideas for boosting their own performance. This process, known as “international benchmarking,” has become a critical tool for governments striving to create excellent education systems. In American education, “benchmarking” often simply means comparing performance outcomes or setting performance targets or “benchmarks”. However, in business and among education leaders in other countries, it means much more. The American Productivity and Quality Center puts it this way, “Benchmarking is the practice of being humble enough to admit that someone else has a better process and is wise enough to learn how to match or even surpass them.”
In the United States, the individual states have the authority and responsibility to provide students with a high quality education. The National Governors Association Education chose the following five steps toward building globally competitive education system.

Action 1: Upgrade state standards by adopting a common core of internationally benchmarked standards in math and language arts for grades K-12 to ensure that students are equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to be globally competitive.
Action 2: Leverage states’ collective influence to ensure that textbooks, digital media, curricula, and assessments are aligned to internationally benchmarked standards and draw on lessons from high performing nations and states.
Action 3: Revise state policies for recruiting, preparing, developing, and supporting teachers and school leaders to reflect the human capital practices of top performing nations and states around the world.
Action 4: Hold schools and systems accountable through monitoring, interventions, and support to ensure consistently high performance, drawing upon international best practices.
Action 5: Measure state-level education performance globally by examining student achievement and attainment in an international context to ensure that, over time, students are receiving the education they need to compete in the 21st century economy.
These countrywide initiatives are new for the United States, but are more common for other countries such as Canada, Australia, Germany, and Spain. In conclusion, I believe the United States has begun the process of integrating all states and federal entities under the same benchmark expectations. This is definitely a move in the right direction. America will not be able to maintain its place in the world unless all of its students acquire the necessary skills to be able to compete in the global economy. Actions 1 and 2 from the National Government association are paramount to the accomplishment of the common goal. Our standards must be comparable or superior to the international standards. Action number 3 is extremely important in that without qualified teachers and administrators, it will be impossible to put into practice what we have planned. Actions 4 and 5 are a necessity to monitor the performance and compare our results with the rest of the world to ensure that we are competitive in the global economy.