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What can Iowa do to make its students “world-class learners,” ready to acquire the skills needed in the 21st-century job market? A group of experts tackled that topic last week during the Iowa Business Council’s 23rd Annual Partnership Meeting in Des Moines.

“The Business Council believes that the time has arrived for Iowa to implement a cohesive, statewide master plan for education,” said Max Phillips, the Business Council’s immediate past chairman. The list of 21st century skills should become “the lens” through which the state develops new content and systems for learning, he said.

The organization, made up of the leaders of 19 of the largest companies in Iowa, the presidents of the three state universities and the head of the Iowa Bankers Association, has a track record of advocacy for education and has made the issue one of its top priorities.

With Phillips on the panel was Judy Jeffrey, director of the Iowa Department of Education, who said the state’s passage of legislation to create a statewide core curriculum last year established a starting point for addressing 21st-century learning.

Also on the panel were Scott McLeod, director of Iowa State University’s Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education; Sally Shuler, executive director of the National Science Resources Center of the National Academies and the Smithsonian Institution; and Dave Wilkerson, superintendent of schools for the Waukee Community School District. Jeffrey said Iowa “has a great deal of work to do” in developing a statewide curriculum that reflects 21st-century learning, and should study characteristics of other countries’ educational systems that are outperforming the United States. Those include highly selective teacher recruitment, ongoing professional development, immediate intervention for struggling students, strong parental involvement and development of administrators.

Wilkerson, who leads one of the state’s fastest-growing districts, said schools will have to do more with fewer resources due to state funding cuts. At the same time, some people don’t believe their own district or school needs to change, and must be included early in the conversation.

“Parents, teachers and community leaders will not react well if they are told by outsiders that they must do something differently,” he said.

Shuler said states must invest in greater professional development of teachers and emphasize development of administrators who can carry out long-term strategic plans that include research-supported textbooks, laptop computers and virtual classrooms.

McLeod noted that careers requiring complex communications skills are not being outsourced or automated, but those types of skills are difficult to assess with standardized tests. “More robust online learning resources are needed,” such as the Advanced Placement testing that Florida offers online, as well as computers for every student.

Phillips, a corporate CEO and a member of the Iowa Board of Education, said the solution will require more than putting more money into the existing system.

“Instead, we need to leverage and transform our current investment and resources in the best possible ways,” he said. “Iowa should not strive to be the high-cost provider. The challenge is to realize the greatest efficiencies and incent quality management, transforming the current system as much as possible before funding is increased.”