Abysmal Graduation Rates
Thirty years ago, America could claim a 33 percent of the college students in the world. Today, America has only 14 percent of college students. Other countries are educating their populations, because they recognize that a highly skilled work force helps them competitively.
Our graduation rates are abysmal and very few students are making it through the entire educational process, by completing college. If we're going to maintain our standard of living, we've got to have the skills to compete with a higher quality workforce that is educated and trained.
Marc Tucker, vice chairman and staff director of the “Commission on the Skills for the American Workforce” reports: “We have the highest dropout rate in the industrialized world. In order to get those rates up, there are a lot of things we have to do.”
Recommendations include national examinations to set higher standards for college-bound students, recruiting teachers and paying them $95,000 a year. Currently, the average teacher is making half that amount. That kind of salary would revolutionize teaching and attract many more highly qualified teachers. We have to attract the best teachers in the world, by recruiting teachers from the top third of the young people coming out of high school.
The report recommends creating high performance schools and universal early childhood education for three and four year olds and encourage some students to move on to college courses at sixteen.
Some educators report that our top students are competitive globally with other industrialized countries, but poor students fall off dramatically. We don't do as well as other countries in overcoming the effects of poverty on educational outcomes.
We need to provide a much higher quality of early childhood education to all our children, but especially to the children, who are arriving at kindergarten with half the vocabulary of their better-off counterparts.
We must find a way to equalize a very inequitable funding system in the United States so that the schools that serve the children, who need us most have the resources required to get up to the highest standards in the world, which are the standards they're going need to achieve.
Our graduation rates are abysmal and very few students are making it through the entire educational process, by completing college. If we're going to maintain our standard of living, we've got to have the skills to compete with a higher quality workforce that is educated and trained.
Marc Tucker, vice chairman and staff director of the “Commission on the Skills for the American Workforce” reports: “We have the highest dropout rate in the industrialized world. In order to get those rates up, there are a lot of things we have to do.”
Recommendations include national examinations to set higher standards for college-bound students, recruiting teachers and paying them $95,000 a year. Currently, the average teacher is making half that amount. That kind of salary would revolutionize teaching and attract many more highly qualified teachers. We have to attract the best teachers in the world, by recruiting teachers from the top third of the young people coming out of high school.
The report recommends creating high performance schools and universal early childhood education for three and four year olds and encourage some students to move on to college courses at sixteen.
Some educators report that our top students are competitive globally with other industrialized countries, but poor students fall off dramatically. We don't do as well as other countries in overcoming the effects of poverty on educational outcomes.
We need to provide a much higher quality of early childhood education to all our children, but especially to the children, who are arriving at kindergarten with half the vocabulary of their better-off counterparts.
We must find a way to equalize a very inequitable funding system in the United States so that the schools that serve the children, who need us most have the resources required to get up to the highest standards in the world, which are the standards they're going need to achieve.
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