This isn’t good news if the United States intends to aggressively compete in the new world economy:
A bipartisan panel is warning that America’s students are falling behind those in even some of the poorest countries, CBS News correspondent Thalia Assuras reports.
“I am really worried about where this country is,” says ex-Sen. Bill Brock, a former Secretary of Labor. “We’ve got an information world, we’re networked to the rest of the world, it’s a global economy and we’re not preparing our young people for that world.”
Students from Asia to Europe outperform Americans on tests. Thirty years ago, the U.S. boasted 30 percent of the world’s college students. That figure is now 14 percent. Meanwhile, most other industrialized nations educate their 16-year olds at a college level.
Apart from the conflict in Iraq and Iran, Americans remain more focused on domestic issues. And issues such as the depth of the American educational system, and how it compares within the context of the international community, get a bit lost in the process. MORE:
The commission calls for a radical overhaul to stream all students to college.
Public schools would no longer be run by local districts. Instead, schools could be managed by groups of teachers or private companies. Teachers would need to pass rigorous assessments … and be paid a lot more. All 4-year-olds and all low-income 3-year-olds would enroll in universal pre-K. Finally, high school students should be prepared to pass college-level board exams by age 16, like Neha Sharma and her classmates.
An interesting proposal, but almost radical in terms of how schools are run now. And more radical solutions don’t usually get put in place until there’s a crisis and they’re completely necessary.
From the sound of the report, that time may not be too far off..
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.