TESTIMONY OF VIVIEN STEWART
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SELECT EDUCATION,
HOUSE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE

June 19, 2003

Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee, Ladies and Gentlemen:

My name is Vivien Stewart. I am Vice President for Education at Asia Society, a non-profit organization founded by John D. Rockefeller 3rd nearly fifty years ago to promote greater understanding of Asia and the Pacific region. I am also Executive Director of the National Coalition on Asia and International Studies in the Schools. This Coalition is chaired by former governors John Engler of Michigan and James B.Hunt Jr of North Carolina. It includes the heads of major education associations, CEOS of major corporations, area and international relations experts and scholars, and media leaders. It was formed in early 2002 to stimulate attention by educators to the international knowledge gap revealed by Asia Society's report, Asia in the Schools: Preparing Young Americans for Today's Interconnected World.(1)

Last fall, the Coalition organized the first-ever States Institute on International Education in the Schools. Twenty-two states sent teams of policymakers and educators to begin to address the challenge of how to develop an internationally competent workforce. The Institute was co-sponsored by the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief States School Officers and the Education Commission of the States. The Subcommittee has the full reports of these meetings.(2,3) My remarks are based on survey research on the international knowledge gap, reports from experts prepared for the meetings and on a recent article in Education Week co-authored with Ted Sanders, former Deputy Secretary of Education in the previous Bush administration, that is submitted as part of this testimony.

I have been invited to address how Title VI programs can be aligned more effectively with K-12 education and what can be done through the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act to continue working towards closing the international gap in our society.

In the few minutes available, I would like to make four points:

Surveys conducted by Asia Society in 2001 and National Geographic Society/Roper in 2002 (4) found that:

Some may wonder why I have been asked to testify about K-12 education at a hearing on the Higher Education Act. In the past, international transactions were the domain of diplomats and international policy and business experts. Federal investment through Title VI therefore focused on the development of experts and languages in higher education. Today, a converging set of economic, demographic, and national security trends mean that all of our young people will need to acquire some international knowledge and skills in order to be successful as workers and citizens.

In short, our education system has not kept pace with a rapidly changing world.

The needs of our country for the global economy and for national security and are growing faster than we are developing the human capacity to deal with them.

Secretary Paige in his address to the States Institute last November outlined an essential new policy direction: "In order to meet our goal to leave no child behind, we must shift our focus and encourage programs that introduce our students to international studies earlier in their education, starting in kindergarten. International knowledge is a new ‘basic’."

But how are we to build the capacity to respond to this emerging policy priority?

The Higher Education Act contains both Title II, which promotes teacher quality and Title VI, which promotes the development of international expertise. There is an unintended gap between these two titles. As currently constituted, neither title adequately addresses our critical need to build teacher capacity in international knowledge and skills.

In the absence of significant attention from the teacher preparation programs of universities (both the arts and sciences and college of education components), the outreach activities of Title VI National Resource Centers are the major source of professional development workshops for teachers about Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and international affairs. Outreach activities of centers have also produced supplementary curriculum materials and have taken groups of teachers on study abroad.(8)

These activities are highly valued by teachers but far too few have access to them.

But as currently funded and structured these outreach activities cannot build the kind of national capacity we need. Although every National Resource Center is required to undertake some outreach to schools, this is a low priority within the program (only 5 of a total of 150 points assigned to program proposals are for K-12 outreach). Budgets are tiny, staff is part-time and staff turnover often high. Moreover, National Resource Centers do not exist in every state and are not typically housed in the institutions that train the majority of our nation's teachers so they have not been able to engage the nation's schools of education or the community colleges where one quarter of prospective teachers study for their first two years. Finally, they have not in the past found willing partners in states and school districts so that their work can systematically improve K-12 classrooms and have a measurable impact on student achievement.

To build on the considerable federal investment in area and international expertise at the post-secondary level and to align Title VI with this new policy imperative, I recommend that this subcommittee consider creating an adequately funded program of "K-16 Partnerships for International Teaching Excellence." At least one of these partnerships should exist in every state, linking international experts in arts and sciences faculty with schools of education and interested school districts. These partnerships could be created under either Title VI or Title II, but Title II has already been finished without attention to international content. They could include matching funds from states or school districts and could undertake a variety of tasks, for example:

In conclusion, closing the international knowledge gap is one of the most urgent challenges we face as a nation today. Our children will live in a world fundamentally different from the one we've known. Certainly we must continue to improve performance in reading, math and science, as well as give students a solid grounding in American history and democratic institutions. But in the 21^st century, like it or not, knowledge of the world is no longer a luxury; it is a necessity. Although Title VI will not solve all of the K-16 capacity needs alone, since this will require longer-term support from state and local levels, a catalytic initiative to stimulate national attention and to develop some strong models is most timely.

Over the past year, I have spoken with leaders from more than 30 states, numerous governors, and dozens of education, business, and community groups. Based on their growing interest, we are confident that such an initiative would receive broad support from governors, parents, business leaders, and educators in K-12 and higher education for there has been a dramatic growth of interest in the need for international education in the schools.

Action to address the international knowledge gap is critical. As Secretary of State Colin Powell recently said, "The young people of the United States and Asia need to know and understand each other because they will be building and sharing the same future." And, to quote Secretary Paige, "It’s time to put the world into ‘world-class’ education."