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Empowering everyone to benefit from the greatest economic boom in human history

Submitted by: John Warner on Sep 28, 2009 at 12:07 pm Tagged with: Economic Development, Education Source: Empower South Carolina

For the past several decades, and for several to come, we are living through the greatest economic boom in human history. The fuse was lit by advances in information technology, from transistors to the Internet. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the globalization of the world economy have accelerated the pace of change. The rise of the largest middle class worldwide in history, and technology advances in fields from nanotechnology to genomics, will keep the boom going well into this century.

But the benefits have not been shared evenly. Working class incomes have not kept up with overall growth, and many people are anxious about being left behind. We can try redistributing wealth, but that is not sustainable long-term. The most innovative, creative people will opt out if they can't benefit from the fruits of their labor. Forbes has a great article about the perverse disincentives we have created that cause middle-class folks to find that a raise or second paycheck doesn't always mean living better.

The solution begins with enhancing education that allows everyone to fully participate in a global, innovation economy. Our current public education system works for a few, is obsolete for most, and fails large numbers of students. Incremental improvement in the status quo is not an acceptable option.

Plato said we each need food, shelter and clothing to survive. We can each spend each day meeting our individual needs. But if one group will be the farmers, they develop specialized skills and can produce more food than individuals working on their own. And if some will be builders, they can produce more housing. And if some will be tailors, they can make more clothes. Then if we trade, each of our daily needs are met, and we have an abundance left over, which is how wealth is created. We all benefit from living in communities of other talented, educated people because increasing specialization leads to increasing innovation and productivity, which leads to higher income and wealth. Adam Smith captured this same dynamic in his pin factory, and it is the same concept underlying Michael Porter's cluster strategy.

Like in Plato's City, we need to maximize the distinctive capabilities of each individual, and we need individuals working in communities surrounded by deep pools of other talented people. At the end of the day this is the only competitive advantage that is sustainable in a global economy. It's why smart, talented people move to where other smart, talented people live. If we want the benefits of a huge, global economy to be shared broadly, we need a public education system with a diversity of educational options that matches the diversity of students served.

To get there, we need to empower teachers to empower students. The Parker District received a "charter" from the State of South Carolina, effectively making it perhaps the first system of charter schools in the country. From 1923-1951, Parker High served seven mill villages in the textile crescent of west Greenville and was named among the "Top Ten High Schools Scholastically in America" five times, despite serving children whose parents could barely sustain their families and who themselves weren't educated.

The Parker District is a model for how to reform public education. Allow each public school in South Carolina to operate as a charter school. Define clearly what teachers must be accountable for, and then get out of their way and let them to their jobs. Allow teachers closest to the problems the freedom to develop creative, specialized solutions that meet the needs of students not well served today. This increases the level of innovation and productivity in public education itself, and is the creative culture we want students to replicate throughout the rest of our society. The flip side of freedom is responsibility. If a school is not performing, don't invest more in failure, be rigorous about replacing the management.

This is how we can create a culture that can make South Carolina public education the best in the country, which is an essential step on the path to prosperity for the state.