McKinsey Report: Achievement Gaps Are Causing The Equivalent of A Deep Recession

Poor academic achievement on multiple levels -- including dismal showings among middle class students in America compared to other countries -- has led the United States to lose hundreds of billions of dollars in its gross domestic product, according to a report released by McKinsey & Company today. 

The report makes a case for the devastating economic impact of not improving the nation's schools. Its data show that achievement gaps have imposed "the economic equivalent of a permanent deep recession." The report does not offer specific recommendations for getting out of this ditch, other than to look more closely at the few school systems that are making progress and adopt their practices.

The way out was left to a discussion with education and civil rights leaders at the formal unveiling of the report at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., today. Disappointingly, although the Rev. Al Sharpton voiced strong applause lines about the need for change, there was no specific mention of what might be achieved by offering better early childhood education opportunities to young children and tying those early experiences to what is taught in elementary schools.The solutions offered did, however, include general calls for investing in teacher quality and leadership, which could be taken to apply to pre-K teachers and programs as well.

The closest thing to an acknowledgment of early education's role came in the mention of New Jersey, which received kudos for making the most progress. Union City, N.J., was called out for being one district where the racial gap had actually been closed. Earlier this month, we wrote about the impressive changes that are taking place in New Jersey, which can be traced in part to high-quality universal pre-K programs.

U.S. Secretary Arne Duncan, who attended the first half of the event, said he saw reason for hope in those  pockets of improvement at the system level. Echoing points he has made in recent public speeches, he added that incentives must be employed to award improvement and "radical change" is needed in underperforming schools. He asked hypothetically: "What if we took the bottom 10 percent of all schools and took out the adults and brought in different adults? Think what that would do to drive the country forward."

The report also urges comparisons with systems in other countries, like Finland, Korea and Canada, where math and science scores on the PISA (the Program for International Assessment) are highest. (Finland, incidentally, provides well-subsidized childcare and high-quality preschools and kindergartens to the vast majority of its citizens.) 

Even when accounting for family income levels, students in those countries are doing significantly better. " All things being equal, a low-income student in the United States is far less likely to do well in school than a low-income student in Finland," the report said. 

The largest applause lines of the morning came when the Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the discussants, repeated his argument about education being the civil rights issue of our era. He is the co-chair of the new Education Equality Project along with Joel Klein, chancellor of the New York City schools.  The McKinsey report, Sharpton said, was the "thermometer" telling us the termperature, whereas he and Klein were the "thermostats," designed to change it.

Sharpton also accused people who "cover up inept teachers and principals" as being the new civil rights adversaries. "They look different today," he said, noting that they might be "friendly liberals" in nice clothes "who look like us." But, he added, they are nothing more than "Professor James Crow, rather than Jim Crow."