Posted on 03/10/2010 2:31:54 AM PST by reaganaut1
One of the world’s foremost experts on comparing national school systems told lawmakers on Tuesday that many other countries were surpassing the United States in educational attainment, including Canada, where he said 15-year-old students were, on average, more than one school year ahead of American 15-year-olds.
America’s education advantage, unrivaled in the years after World War II, is eroding quickly as a greater proportion of students in more and more countries graduate from high school and college and score higher on achievement tests than students in the United States, said Andreas Schleicher, a senior education official at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, which helps coordinate policies for 30 of the world’s richest countries.
“Among O.E.C.D. countries, only New Zealand, Spain, Turkey and Mexico now have lower high school completion rates than the U.S.,” Mr. Schleicher said. About 7 in 10 American students get a high school diploma.
Mr. Schleicher’s comments came in testimony before the Senate education committee and in a statement he delivered. The panel plans to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the main law governing federal policy on public schools.
The committee also heard from Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, the largest teachers’ union; John Castellani, president of the Business Roundtable, a group that represents corporate executives; and Charles Butt, chief executive of a supermarket chain in Texas, who said employers there faced increasing difficulties in hiring qualified young workers.
The blame for America’s sagging academic achievement does not lie solely with public schools, Mr. Butt said, but also with dysfunctional families and a culture that undervalues education. “Schools are inheriting an overentertained, distracted student,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
What's the context or perspective, if any, on stuff like this? Supposedly, Sputnik in 1957 was the "great wake-up call" and there were all sorts of educational initiatives.
NYT pimping a socialist/progressive/union future education package...which they then will come out advocating 4-day schools while teachers take no cuts in pay or get paid more. /s
If you discount or toss out the rural school statistics...which show something like nine of ten kids graduating...the overall results would be alot worse. Urban school decay is around half the entire problem. But you won’t dare hear any political figure from either party say that in public.
First the unions destroyed our manufacturing sector. Then our government employees sector, and now are education sector. What’s next? Wait till they try and unionize our military!!
The big missing points are course content and the unionization of public education.
A quick look at the progressive indoctrination centers that we call public schools will explain both our failure in education and the current downfall in our government.
‘UNExpediently’????
As long as the libs at the NEA are in charge, our government-schooled kids are doomed in world competition.
Is why we home-schooled.
compare the scores each year from 1966 to today... and you will notice the decline started shortly after the creation of the department of education.
government education
controlled by progressives
is there any wonder we’re falling behind?
It is sad but it is not by any stretch of the imagination news.
Multiculturalism, self esteem, political correctness, the student aid system and the liberals domination of the education hierarchy have all worked together to gut the US education system.
As far as I can see, up until about 1957, the US was doing pretty well in education. Then they rolled out all of these "initiatives" and made the schools into leftwing indoctrination centers. The quality of education started going down at that time.
As it often does, the Left said one thing (We need to improve education) and did another (Let's dumb down America).
To what extent does the expansion of the pool of test takers, i.e. 50% of H.S. students as opposed to 25%(I'm only guessing) , account for the decline? I know mh kids' high school education has been a lot more rigorous than mine was. Except they don't teach grammar anymore.
Sounds like the Progressive enterprise that Glen Beck elucidates.
Can I ask where you live? The high school textbooks I see today remind me of the textbooks I had in junior high school or even elementary school.
A couple of "shoulda's" : Kansas City Missouri : Progressive Education doctrine::RomneyCare: Obamacare. Shh! Don't tell the people.
I think that you are closer to the truth. So much of this has to do with breeding. The minorities are popping out kids by the dozens and America has to live with this outcome. And the outcome is going to be controlled more and more by foreign values and lower IQ that they bring in here.
A relatively prodigious number of kids in Maryland take Calculus in high school, there were probably only 25 or 30 of my 700 + graduating class that did. That alone is enough to keep the midnight oil burning. Plus AP’s, which are quite rigorous. And 7 majors; in my time, 4 was the norm , 5 the limit.
Added to ...
Obama-nomics & Greece [link-list]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2464021/posts?page=4
I would suggest you should explicitly recognize the Colleges of Education in our universities as the drivers of the weak course content and methods being used in our schools.
If I were Czar (”the” real Czar, not “a” wimpy Obama czar), one of my first acts would be to abolish Colleges of education and all public-sector unions, including most importantly the teachers’ unions.
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