Poorly Reasoned Report Calls for Schools to Drive Economic Competitiveness

BOULDER, CO (October 14, 2025)—In late July, the National Governors Association released a report urging states to transform schools into stronger drivers of economic competitiveness. The report recommends that governors build public dashboards to track outcomes, align schools with workforce needs, and evaluate programs based on graduates’ earnings potential.

Education policy researcher Ryan Pfleger reviewed Let’s Get Ready! Educating All Americans for Success and found the report’s usefulness to be undermined by its unsupported focus on economic competitiveness as the central measure of educational endeavors.

The report identifies four “readiness” areas—academic skills, job preparation, civic participation, and lifelong well-being—each justified in terms of future earnings and employer value. While acknowledging the need to move beyond a narrow focus on test scores, the recommendations consistently frame fundamental educational goals, including civic engagement and student well-being, primarily through an economic lens.

Dr. Pfleger cautions that this dashboard-governance model could weaken local democratic control, prioritizing workforce training over democratic citizenship, broad human development, and the present well-being of children. Moreover, the report’s claims and recommendations are poorly grounded, relying heavily on CEO testimonials and elite convenings, while ignoring a robust body of research showing that high-stakes reward-and-punish accountability schemes fail to meaningfully improve outcomes. Such systems, research warns, often narrow the curriculum and harm teaching.

By treating children and teachers as the cause of economic inequality rather than as its victims, the report risks diverting attention from the structural reforms needed to address poverty and wage stagnation. As a result, Let’s Get Ready! offers little in the way of useful guidance for genuinely improving schools.

Find the review, by Ryan Pfleger, at:
https://nepc.colorado.edu/review/get-ready

Find Let’s Get Ready! Educating All Americans for Success, from the National Governors Association, at:
https://www.nga.org/letsgetready/

 

NEPC Reviews (https://nepc.colorado.edu/reviews) provide the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. NEPC Reviews are made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice: http://www.greatlakescenter.org

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), a university research center housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, sponsors research, produces policy briefs, and publishes expert third-party reviews of think tank reports. NEPC publications are written in accessible language and are intended for a broad audience that includes academic experts, policymakers, the media, and the general public. Our mission is to provide high-quality information in support of democratic deliberation about education policy. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence and support a multiracial society that is inclusive, kind, and just. Visit us at: http://nepc.colorado.edu

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