Lou Gerstner, former IBM chair and founder of the "Teaching Commission", penned a trenchant op-ed in yesterday's Wall Street Journal that says American companies are outsourcing jobs not just because they can find cheaper labor overseas, but also because workers abroad, particularly in Asia, have stronger skills. "America," Gerstner argues, "is starting to suffer from a reverse brain drain." Yet neither presidential candidate is proposing the kind of long-term solution that will reverse this trend. "We are fooling ourselves if we believe that tweaking tax rates, training, or trade agreements will turn this tide. The global information economy is here. It is brutal and unforgiving. . . . The only way to ensure we remain a world economic power is by elevating our public schools - particularly the teachers who lead them - to the top tier of American society." Of course, acknowledging that means accepting that, on average, teachers today don't hail from the top tier - and that simply paying more won't change that fact. Instead, Gerstner argues, "it's time to make teaching an attractive, accessible profession for the most talented and motivated Americans, no matter what their formal training, by breaking down the bureaucratic barriers to entry that can keep Ph.D.s, even Nobel Prize winners, out of public school classrooms. And . . . it's time to give principals, who are charged with leading schools to excellence, the authority they need to hire and fire staff. Without that power, accountability is a cruel joke."
"Bad schools + shackled principals = outsourcing," by Lou Gerstner, Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2004 (subscription required)