Why high-reliability and why now?

While most education reform efforts in the United States focus on closing achievement gaps between high- and low-performing students, which is critically important, the future of American security and prosperity depends on our response to a different question: What must we do to close the “other” achievement gap, the one between high-performing U.S. students and the highest-performing students in the world?

The latest results of Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) show U.S. students still lag behind their counterparts in math and science in countries like South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. Further, in the U.S., only 7 percent of students reached the advanced level in eighth-grade math, while 48 and 47 percent of eighth graders in Singapore and South Korea, respectively, reached the advanced level.

To address this gap, McREL reviewed the principles, policies, and practices of both the world’s highest performing education systems and high reliability organizations. High reliability systems, such as air traffic control, electrical power generation, and chemical processing, are those that require—and maintain—very low margins of error because system failure would be catastrophic.

What would our schools look like if student failure was viewed as catastrophic? Can education adopt and adapt practices and principles from industries outside of education that drive innovation while maintaining highly reliable, top-level performance?