Is public education failing?

Answer 1

"All men by nature desire to know," said Aristotle. Either Aristotle was wrong, or public education is failing to awaken the academic desires of American students.

According to a new Manhattan Institute for Policy Research study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, only 32 percent of recent high school graduates were qualified to attend a four-year college. In addition, the report showed that the high school graduation rate remains depressingly low at only 70 percent.

For years, American education experts have been alarmed at the growing inability of public school students and graduates to compete academically with peers in other industrialized democratic countries. As Charles Sykes wrote in his revolutionary 1990s book Dumbing Down our Kids: Why America's Children Feel Good about Themselves but Can't Read, Write, or Add, "When the very best American students — the top one percent — are measured against the best students of other countries, America's best and brightest finished at the bottom." While Sykes may have exaggerated the problem, it is true that America's students are average at best.