Staggering education statistics

From The Washington Post

"Since 1995 the average mathematics score for fourth-graders jumped 11 points. At this rate we catch up with Singapore in a little over 80 years . . . assuming they don't improve."

- Norman R. Augustine, retired CEO of Lockheed Martin

Too many American parents, Duncan says, have "cognitive dissonance" concerning primary and secondary schools: They think their children's schools are fine, and that schools that are not fine are irredeemable. This, Duncan says, is a recipe for "stasis" and "insidious paralysis." He attempts to impart motion by puncturing complacency and picturing the payoff from excellence.

He notes that 75 percent of young Americans would be unable to enlist in the military for reasons physical (usually obesity), moral (criminal records) or academic (no high school diploma). A quarter of all ninth-graders will not graduate in four years. Among the 34Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations, only four (Mexico, Spain, Turkey and New Zealand) have dropout rates higher than America's, whose 15-year-olds ranked 23rd in math and 25th in science in 2006. Canadians that age were more than a school year ahead of their American counterparts; Koreans and Finns were up to two years ahead. Within America, the achievement gaps separating white students from blacks and Hispanics portend (according to a McKinsey & Co. study) "the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession."

If Lockheed MartinAnother study suggests that a modest improvement (from a current average of about 500 to 525) over 20 years in an international student assessment of 15-year-olds in the OECD nations - improvement in reading, math and science literacy - would mean a $115 trillion increase in these nations' aggregate GDP. Of that, $41 trillion would accrue to America. McKinsey calculated that if American students matched those in Finland, America's economy would have been 9 to 16 percent larger in 2008 - between $1.3 trillion and $2.3 trillion.