What We Can Learn from American Education Reform

ABSTRACT

Education reform has become an important political issue in the world. First, education is an infrastructure of consecutive economic growth through labor productivity improvement. Second, in spite of the huge amount of government education expenditure for many years, the quality of public schools has deteriorated. Third, the education market has been changing into a fast growing industry.

In Japan, the ministry of education, science and technology disclosed "21st Century Education Reform Plan". However, while it covers all of the aspects, the goal accomplishment measurement standard of each action plan is unclear and the methods for estimating schools, universities and teachers have not been scrutinized adequately. The authority power and fund resources concentrate too much on the ministry for innovations to appear from actual educationspots.

In U.S., while the role of the federal government is to build an infrastructure of education equal opportunities, each of state governments and school districts must take the management responsibility and accountability in school education. Therefore,the innovations, which contribute to education reform, come outof state governments and actual education spots. Especially, the recent new efforts in Web-based leaning field are noteworthy.

As the result of estimating the status quo in Japan and comparing with U.S., I would like to submit the following three policy proposals.