The GM school of reform.

• Author: Shreve, David L.
• Position: General Motors Corp.; solving the crisis in the educational system

Like American car manufacturers, educators have been slow to accept the realities that signal needed change. Can the education bureaucracy make the long-term, radical changes we need?

Nearly 10 years have passed since "A National At Risk" rocked the American public school system with its accusation of "unilateral educational disarmament." In the intervening decade, the report's warning has been taken to heart as two distinct but overlapping philosophies have emerged to attack the shortcomings in education performance cited in the report. Traditionalists wanted gradual reforms, while advocates of restructing, impatient with incremental efforts, have made significant and substantial changes in the public schools of Oregon, Ohio, South Carolina and Kentucky.

Both groups confront obstacles in the quest for change, the greatest being the natural disinclination of large, established bureaucracies to alter themselves in any meaningful way. Fifteen years ago, Ohio Senator Charles Horn witnessed evidence of this inertia in the example of another giant American institution. As then-major of Kettering, Ohio, Horn spoke with a General Motors vice-chairman, in town to attend the opening of a museum. Horn said the preferred Americans autos and he wished GM would develop a high-performance small car that was also energy efficient, a growing concern in the post-oil-embargo atmosphere of 1976.

"Buy a foreign car", the executive told Horn. "We sell more cars to foreign countries than they will ever sell here. The demand for those cars is just a fad."

We now know that GM faces a crisis that can be attributed to that corporate worldview expressed in 1976. Despite attempts by the Ohio legislature to restructure the public schools, Senator Horn is concerned that, like GM, they will continue to face problems common to all entrenched bureaucracies having trouble adjusting to changing circumstances. Something more than internally motivated reforms may be necessary.

Like GM, the education establishment met the first calls for reform in the 1980s with denial and resitance. When it reluctantly acknowledged the existence of a problem, its solution was to ask for more money, and it accepted legislative suggestions--more testing, more graduation requirements, more certification--only if they were tied to more money. In the wake of "A Nation At Risk," 45 states attempted to finetune the existing system. One result was that public school funding increased by 114 percent over the decade of the 1980s. (In the same period GM pumped $90 billion into retooling its existing plants and equipment.)

Of course, the public schools and GM face different circumstances. A business can objectively measure its health with profit and loss statements every quarter, whereas judging the effectiveness of reforms and school restructing is far more subjective and requires years off patience.

Meanwhile, some members of the educational bureaucracy contend that many schools are performing as they always have. According to Gerald Bracey, a former...