What do Finland, South Korea, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Belgium, Australia, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Iceland, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Ireland, France, the U.K., Poland, the Slovak Republic, Hungary, Luxembourg, Norway and Spain have in common? Their “average” 15-year-old, according to a National Governors Assn. report, is more math-proficient than their American counterpart. Good thing we were dealing only in averages; if we were to add the top quartile comparison, Asia would also blow us away. According to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, speaking in the April 27^th Newsweek, “Kids in India and China are going to school 25% to 30% more than students here.”

According to a companion piece in the above Newsweek, “Forth years ago, the U.S. still had the best graduation rates in the world. Now it ranks 18^th.” And falling. The No Child Left Behind Act allows states to set their own standards for reading and math proficiency. So a whole pile of states created new lower standards to make themselves look better. If you look at how these states measured such academic proficiency in their public schools against a national test (the National Assessment of Educational Progress – NAEP), the differences are staggering. Mississippi goes from first to last. Here are a few examples (looking at fourth-graders): Mississippi: state – 89%, NAEP – 18%; Louisiana: state – 67%, NAEP – 20%; New Mexico: state – 52%, NAEP – 20%, California: state – 21%, NAEP – 48%; and Nevada: state – 21%, NAEP – 45%. Public school dropout rates in the top ten cities average over 50%; Detroit hits 74%.

President Obama has said: “This is prescription for economic decline, because we know that the countries that out-teach will out-compete us tomorrow.” Underfunding is chronic, but there are bigger “American” issues blocking the way. It isn’t, for the most part, teachers’ unions standing stopping progress – they seem to favor national standards – it’s our obsession with local control and local funding. While most of the rest of the world has a national public school systems (primary and secondary education), the U.S. has over 13,000 autonomous school districts, many vastly more concerned that “intelligent design” be taught in their schools than whether their graduates can compete in today’s world. And it’s pretty clear that they cannot.

Each of the above school districts has its own governing board, its own set of rules, and its own, often cumbersome and heavily entrenched money-sucking bureaucracy, duplicating functions of nearby school districts in the name of local autonomy. Rich populations centers, to no one’s surprise, tend to have better (funded) schools than those poorer, more crowded region. But “local control” is an American sacred cow. Maybe funding from the new federal stimulus package can make adhering to more national standards, encouraging smaller classrooms and better teachers, part of the plan. But with the exception of a few public school districts in wealthier areas, folks wanting better education are relying on charter and private schools.

The net effect of a meltdown is an accelerating polarization between well-educated children of those who can afford to pay for it and those stuck in the under-funded and under-qualified public school systems of so-many local schools.

Without change, the future looks pretty bleak, even for the top graduates in our top schools… if they want to live in this country. They will be surrounded with under-educated adults, clamoring for better pay and social benefits, angry at those who “have,” and voting their anger at the ballot box. Education is and always has been priority one… to those nations who are serious about their future.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message