Most Americans, whether employers or parents or people who do business internationally, recognize that our students’ achievement is mismatched with our economy. The growing sectors of our economy are highly skill-intensive, and only the shrinking sectors require unskilled laborers. Yet, as evinced by scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the share of our population that is capable of performing highly skilled jobs is no greater than it was forty years ago. Our students’ achievement is mediocre compared to the achievement of the people worldwide with whom they will have to compete for jobs in the future.
For instance, American fifteen-year-olds scored below the average in mathematics in 2009 among students in member nations of theOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). They merely scored at the average in reading. Moreover, in the future, US students will not compete only with OECD students. They will compete with millions of people from countries like India and China where the number of well-educated young adults is growing very rapidly.
The recognition that American students must improve is not enough, however. The United States needs to find the methods and the resources to make the improvements. In this essay, I examine some of the methods that hold the greatest promise and argue that they are affordable with the resources we already have.