Kondracke Says State of U.S. Education Is Grim & Deteriorating

[Adam's Apple]

Needed: A Governor to Launch Radical Change in Schools
By Mort Kondracke
December 21, 2006

What the Iraq Study Group said about the Iraq War situation - "grim and deteriorating" - has been echoed by another bipartisan commission, this one studying the state of American education.

It didn't use those exact words, but the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce warned that unless U.S. schools are improved radically, the country's standard of living will plunge over the next 20 years.

The commission, whose members included four former Cabinet officers, proposed a series of radical and most likely controversial changes designed to keep the U.S. from falling behind foreign competitors.

As this study and numerous other reports on competitiveness have warned, other countries - led by India and China - increasingly are offering the world's employers highly skilled work forces at lower costs than American labor, causing jobs and investment to move offshore.

The only reason that employers would depend on Americans, the panel said, is "if we could offer something that the Chinese and Indians, and others, cannot."

That has to be superior skills, know-how, technology and innovation, yet U.S. schools - the second costliest in the world per pupil - badly lag behind in performance on international tests.

for full article:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/12/needed_a_governor_to_launch_ra.html

 

[Kagom]

I agree, the quality of education IS deteriorating. We need to really work on it and improve things, not throw money at it.

 

[Adam's Apple]

If we are going to be competitive in a global world, we not only need to start fixing the educational process in our schools, but we also need to start instilling in our children at an early age that learning and getting an education are worthwhile and desirable goals. Haven't we had enough of the dumbing down of America's kids and the educational process?