US Educational Train Wreck In Progress...

Achieve, Inc., a bipartisan, nonprofit education organization formed by governors and prominent business leaders, found that math and English tests for high school diplomas require only middle school knowledge, and found those math graduation tests measure only what students in other countries learn in the seventh grade

http://www.stateline.org/stateline/?pa=story&sa=showStoryInfo&id=377921)

(... and if that doesn't scare you, maybe this will...)


U.S. 15 year olds ranked 29th in Science - U.S.A rank # 29
Here's a partial listing of examination rankings in the Science series.
Finland was the highest-performing country on the PISA 2006 science scale. Six other high-scoring countries were: Canada, Japan and New Zealand and the partner countries/economies Hong Kong-China, Chinese Taipei and Estonia. Australia, the Netherlands, Korea, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium and Ireland, and the partner countries/economies Liechtenstein,Slovenia and Macao-China also scored above the OECD average.
Rankings first 30 nations in the Science series > Finland, Hong Kong-China, Canada, Chinese-Taipei, Estonia, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Netherlands, Liechenstein, Korea, Slovenia, Germany, England, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Macao-China, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Hungary, Sweden, Poland, Denmark, France, Crotia, Iceland, Latvia, U.S.A., Slovak Republic.
U.S.A. scored below avearage in the Science series, at ranking position #29.
U.S. 15 year olds ranked 35th in Mathematics - U.S.A. rank #35
Mathematics Performance > Finland and Korea, and the partners Chinese Taipei and Hong Kong-China, outperformed all other countries/economies in PISA 2006. Other countries with mean performances significantly above the OECD average were the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Belgium, Australia, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Iceland and Austria, as well as the partner countries/economies Macao-China, Liechtenstein, Estonia and Slovenia.

http://mwhodges.home.att.net/new_96_report.htm

... How's that working for ya?