Keynote Speaker “Education, Innovation and Arizona's Future”

Dr. Michael Crow

Education, Innovation and Arizona’s Future – Dr. Michael M. Crow, President of Arizona State University

In a compelling keynote address, Arizona State University’s President Dr. Michael Crow captivated the Friday morning session outlining his vision for an innovative approach to education in Arizona.

Dr. Crow opened by stating, “We’re all here because we share some common values. All of us are committed to children and their success or we wouldn’t be in this room. None of us would be here if we didn’t believe in the future.”

Dr. Crow shared that over the course of time our nation built a model that was the pride of the world. He referred to the system we have inherited that allowed for access to education and public universities, going on to note that while we achieved great things, “the model that we are presently implementing, with a few exceptions, peaked in 1970.”

“A kid who doesn’t graduate from high school is the single most expensive object in society. We will spend more tax dollars on that person than 10 other people over their life,” said Dr. Crow. “I want to make sure that everyone grasps the impact of our nonsuccess.”

According to Dr. Crow, there are many variables that impact social mobility, “One variable outweighs all others - the single most significant predictor of social mobility is educational attainment.” Dr. Crow went on to explain that if educational attainment is the way we advance to the highest levels of achievement and our educational system has peaked, we are not making progress.  

And as Dr. Crow walked through the challenge of a broken system, he was quick to meet the disheartening statistics with the firm stance that we need solutions. He offered ASU’s approach to re-engineering to meet this challenge.

In a fascinating story Dr. Crow shared that a copy of the Aug. 10, 1950 edition of the University of California catalogue sits on his desk. He recalled excerpts from the book noting that at that time, tuition was free and the university provided a great public education to those who had worked hard in high school. Now students must be in the top 4 percent and many of the students who graduated more than 50 years ago would not be admitted today.

Dr. Crow went on to share that he has dubbed this pedagogy “diamond polishing,” or selecting the top tier of students to colleges and universities. He noted that these students are the only ones with equal chances of success at the post-secondary level. He provided ASU’s approach to find, shape, cut and then polish which cannot be done through exclusion.

“The United States will not be successful if every school district and every college and university operates as diamond polishing,” said Dr. Crow. “We cannot approach things from their perspective. Arizona is a place where innovations can be realized.”

Unlike many universities of comparable size, ASU operates by inclusion with the belief that selecting only the top achieving students for the pursuit of post-secondary success is a failure. Rather, Dr. Crow reset the university’s values and objective.

“We are a student-centered university,” said Dr. Crow. “If all you do is operate something from its existing operating modality, you will never improve your performance.”

In Dr. Crow’s tenure, the results have been impressive. The university has doubled its graduates, quadrupled its research, all with reduced state support in the wake of the recession.

Dr. Crow credits the eight design aspirations which, “requires us to rethink everything about who we are and how we accomplish things.”

Dr. Crow took questions from attendees ranging from diversity of gender among college students to support for teachers and the innovative ways ASU is recruiting from rural communities to technology.

Dr. Kent Scribner from Phoenix Union School District asked Dr. Crow to provide advice to school board members and administrators to which Dr. Crow eloquently stated, “I believe that the chance of success is greater than the chance of failure. I would like to hear us talk about what we can do. You can spend your time feeling beleaguered and powerless – which turns out to be not true.”

Dr. Crow concluded with, “A small group of people, an individual school board or a group of superintendents can do anything. All they have to do is want to do it. If you love children and believe in the future, we can get a lot of things done.”

ASPRA Reporter Danielle Airey, Peoria Unified