What the Future May Behold - forecasting education - Brief Article

School Administrator, Dec, 1999

Weary of reading about the new "millennium" (and whether it genuinely kicks off next month or a year later)? Me too.

For that reason, you'll find we begrudgingly permitted only a handful of references to that word in this month's issue-a rater remarkable feat given that we are devoting the final issue of 1999, the decade and the century to what the future in public education may hold for school system leaders.

The 16 essays that comprise our feature section, titled "Fair or Foul? Forecasts for Education," include several names that ought to be familiar to AASA members. Stephanie Pace Marshall, president of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy; Harold "Bud" Hodgkinson, a Washington-based educational demographer; and Mary Cetron, president of a forecasting firm in Falls Church, Va., were part of the Council of 21 that helped our association earlier this year publish Preparing Schools and School Systems for the 21" Century.

Other contributors, including several from outside education, may be less familiar but no less insightful.

In preparing the editorial content of this issue, I looked back at an article that ran in this magazine in February 1989 written by Cetron. It was titled "Class of 2000." In it, he cited what would he the schools' most pressing needs to ensure high-quality education as the next century begins. Most of the prescriptions on his laundry list are strikingly familiar: more time in school, smaller class sizes, differentiated instruction, the need for performance standards, better vocational preparation.

But as someone who spends his days in the world of information gathering and dissemination, I found one point in his 10-year-old piece resonated more than anything. Cetron contended that when members of the Class 2000 graduate from high school next spring they will have been exposed to more information in their senior year alone than their grandparents were in a lifetime!

On that fascinating note, I leave you to peruse our fearless forecasters.

Jay P. Goldman

Voice: 703-875-0745

E-mail: jgoldman@aasa.org