The Common Core and the Common Good
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Published: August 21, 2013 2 Comments
America, we have a problem.
Related
School Standards’ Debut Is Rocky, and Critics Pounce(August 16, 2013)
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Our educational system is not keeping up with that of many other industrialized countries, even as the job market becomes more global and international competition for jobs becomes steeper.
We have gone from the leader to a laggard.
According to the Broad Foundation, an educational reform group, “American students rank 25th in math, 17th in science and 14th in reading compared to students in 27 industrialized countries.”
And we have gone from No. 1 in high school graduation to 22nd among industrialized countries, according to a reportlast year by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
That same report found that fewer than half of our students finished college. This ranked us 14th among O.E.C.D. countries, below the O.E.C.D. average. In 1995 we were among the Top 5.
Some rightly point to the high levels of poverty in our public schools to adjust for our lagging performance, but poverty — and affluence — can’t explain all the results away.
As Amanda Ripley, an investigative journalist, explains in her new book, “The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way,” American students are not