Kids Worldwide Face Huge Educational Challenges. Is Better Leadership a Solution?

Chee, who is also a sheep farmer, runs an elementary school 45 miles northeast of Flagstaff, Arizona. Many children travel more than two hours each way from their homes on the reservation. They are immediately thrust into a culture of “No Excuses,” as part of the first Native American school to become a member of a nationwide college readiness program. He expects every one of his students to plan for a college education.

When Chee first began teaching at the school, he would ask his fourth grade students where they were going to college. “They had no idea,” he said. “I’d say what profession do you want to go into, and they would say, ‘What are you talking about?’ ”

Chee, who has also vastly improved literacy rates, takes his students to visit college campuses while they are still in elementary school. They eat lunch in a cafeteria at Arizona State University, where Chee is getting a doctorate, and learn about different programs and classes they might take. They  “learn the logistics of a college application,” Chee said.

The conference gave me a chance to learn how UNESCO spends years compiling data and searching from common themes. I spoke with Manos Antoninis, who directs the Global Education Monitoring Report, which analyzes data used by policymakers around the world to strengthen their education systems. Because the conference took place before the election, we didn’t contemplate what will become of UNESCO’s relationship with the U.S. President-elect Donald Trump severed ties with the group during his first term. The relationship was re-established under President Joe Biden; Trump has said little about it since.

Antoninis said he hopes that the report will spark new ways to develop, recruit and support school leaders, many of whom who came to Brazil to swap success stories and learn from the inclusion of profiles and comparisons from more than 200 countries. Antoninis  stressed the importance of reaching both the poorest and richest countries to collect data.

“An American reader should read the monitoring reports to open their eyes to the diversity in equality,” he told me. “You see it in your country, but not in the scale of how people live elsewhere, and in the low quality of learning. Some are just so far behind.”

It isn’t always easy to read through the lengthy reports and to sit through the drumbeat of bad news and hand wringing that often accompanies the latest unnerving education reports. I count on my colleague, Proof Points columnist Jill Barshay, to help interpret the latest NAEP and  PISA results by explaining trends and pointing out problems that seem to have worsened since the global pandemic. That’s one reason why I look forward to moderating a discussion of resilience among worldwide education leaders in Hong Kong next month.

I’m hoping for the chance to meet more leaders like Chee, to get behind the numbers and to learn how a school leader can change lives. Chee told me that several of his students have graduated from college in recent years. He cherishes the moments.

“Some of my former students are now teachers, and they come into the classroom and visit us,” Chee said. “Or a family will come in and say, ‘Hey, my son is graduating from college; my daughter graduated,’ and it all started here.”

This story about school leadership was written by Liz Willen and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.