U.S. Education Gets An "F"

An international organization that few Americans have heard of has just released a report entitled Educational Policy Analysis 2001. But don't let the bland title fool you.
There is a time bomb ticking away in the 150-page analysis that compares the national education systems of industrial countries.

The time bomb is the failing American system of education that is producing a growing underclass of citizens who are not equipped to deal with modern life and the future job market.

The Organization For Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report makes grim reading for Americans.

Buried among the statistics is the stunning fact that 60 percent of Americans who complete high school and do not go on to college lack even the basic skills to read timetables or fill out forms. They are not only functionally illiterate; they are certainly unemployable in the high tech jobs of the future.

Even more damning is the revelation that out of 18 industrial countries that were surveyed, the United States was the worst in the underachievement rate of high school graduates. Even Poland did better.

Best was tiny Finland, where fewer than 10 percent of high school graduates are functionally illiterate.

Not surprisingly, countries that have the best all-around school systems - Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden - are also among those that spend the most on education.

On the other hand, despite the dismal achievement of many American high schools, the United States ranks near the top in the proportion of citizens with college or post-graduate education. Only Canada and Japan do as well.

But that also confirms what other experts have warned: that our school system is creating a dangerous divide in American society - an upper class with a higher education, and an underclass that will become the time bomb of America's future.

The report prepared by the OECD, an international body that promotes economic development in the industrial world, will be discussed by government officials from around the world in Paris at the beginning of April. It is nothing less than a national embarrassment for Americans.

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