Experts urge drastic school reform.

A panel of public policy experts in education and labor recently warned that unless dramatic steps are taken to improve the way students are educated, Americans will lose jobs overseas and see their standard of living drop. The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce called for a radical overhaul of U.S. education, which includes paying companies to run school districts, enrolling students in college after 10th grade, and paying teachers more than $100,000.

The bipartisan panel, comprised of two former federal education secretaries. two former labor secretaries and a variety of other luminaries, says that if the system is not radically redesigned by 2021, jobs will be lost to countries like India and China, where workers are better educated and paid less.

The panel's report addresses many topics, but one of its more unusual proposals calls for a rigorous 10th-grade test that would allow those who pass to graduate from high school to pursue technical or vocational training or continue high school work in preparing to attend a four-year institution.

The report says that by allocating fewer resources to grades 11 and 12, the government might save an estimated $60 billion to spend on improvements to the nation's schools, which include creating pre-kindergarten programs and boosting teacher salaries by scrapping pension plans in favor of higher pay and 401(k) options. Commission members say that boosting teacher pay will attract better candidates to the profession. Related proposals include making preschool available to all four-year-olds and low-income three-year-olds, and weighting state funding to send more money to the most disadvantaged students.

Not everyone, however, supports the panel's recommendations. Antonia Cortese, executive vice president of the American Federation of Teachers, says that the proposals include "seriously flawed ideas with faddish allure that won't produce better academic results."

Charles Knapp, chairman of the commission, maintains that the U.S. has a very high cost of education but still produces mediocre results. "The recommendations are absolutely necessary if we want America to maintain its standard of living," he says. www.skillscommission.org