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The Future of Schooling: Educating America in 2014

 
 
Product Description  

  		After analyzing key demographic, economic, cultural, global, political, and technological trends in the US, McREL has written 16 scenarios that describe how these trends may converge to create different futures for schooling in America. The report describes four different scenarios, or alternate futures, for four different types of education-related organizations:
  1. Local school districts,
  2. State education agencies,
  3. National education organizations,
  4. Education research and development organizations.

Implications and options for educators, as well as likely indicators for each scenario and discussion questions are provided after each scenario.

Authors  Linda Brannan, Bryan Goodwin, Sally Grubb, Laura Lefkowits, Adrienne Schure, and Tim Waters with Susan Adams, Zoe Barley, Ceri Dean, David Frost, Jennifer Norford, Howard Pitler, Glen Taylor, and John Wetherington.
Target Audience  Education leaders, policymakers, and leaders of organizations or companies that provide services or products to the education market.
Ways to Use this Product  Scenarios are not predictions of the future. Rather, they are stories intended to describe possible alternate futures. Their main purpose is to stimulate thinking and conversations in order to help organizations and individuals prepare themselves to respond to changes when they occur.
Key Ideas  
By the year 2014, the following trends may converge to create dramatic changes in education and schooling
  • the No Child Left Behind Act requires all schools to demonstrate 100 percent of students are proficient on state tests or be reconstituted, taken over, or closed
  • 70 million Baby Boomers (including many teachers and school leaders) will enter retirement in large numbers
  • Generation X, a generation with different sensibilities and priorities than Boomers, will assume positions of leadership in schools and districts,
  • the funds paid from Social Security to retirees will likely begin to exceed funds collected from workers, creating a potential fiscal crisis for the federal government
  • as Boomers retire and start spending less, the economy could enter its worst downturn since the Great Depression,
  • rapid changes to information and digital technology could expand the educational choices available to parents and students.

Educators should consider how these and other trends may converge so they can prepare their organizations and students for changes that lie over the horizon.

Visit the Future of Schooling website.

How to Get this Product  Available for free PDF download or purchase pre-printed copies from McREL for $30 each.
Shipping and handling fees (if applicable) will be added at checkout.

Sales tax may be added for orders shipped to Colorado addresses.


Contact McREL by e-mail or by telephone at (303) 337-0990.
APA Citation  McREL. (2005). The future of schooling: Educating America in 2014. Aurora, CO: Author.
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