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TMCNet: EDITORIAL: Deficit of another dimension: The country is slipping behind in the education race

[August 01, 2010]

EDITORIAL: Deficit of another dimension: The country is slipping behind in the education race

Aug 01, 2010 (The Akron Beacon Journal - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Increasingly, lawmakers and ordinary citizens alike recognize that financial shortfalls pose a serious threat to the nation's development and stability. Deficit hawks are coming out of the woodwork in Congress and statehouses. Unfortunately, another deficit with an equally destabilizing potential arouses nowhere near that degree of alarm.

In the past few years, a number of reports and data from such groups as the College Board and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have indicated the United States is losing the leading edge in education. The most recent such report came last week from the College Board, best known for services such as Advanced Placement programs and college admissions tests. Its stark, but not new, conclusion: "The United States is facing an alarming education deficit that threatens our global competitiveness and economic future." How so? Roughly 39 percent of the population of workers heading into retirement, the 55- to 64-year-olds, hold an associate degree or higher. Even so, they are among the best educated, fourth in educational attainment among industrialized countries in 2007. By contrast, the younger population that will replace them, 25- to 34-year-olds, is 12th among industrialized countries on the education measure.

Clearly, several countries have overtaken the United States, making dramatic gains in educating younger workers. A commission set up by the College Board examined the educational system from kindergarten through college. It reported in 2008 that the "torrent of American talent and human potential entering the educational pipeline is reduced to a trickle 16 years later." The board declared it a national priority to have 55 percent of adults attain an associate degree or higher by 2025. In 2008, 41.6 percent of 25- to 34-year olds had reached that level.

The call on the nation is to face up to mounting evidence that it is slipping fast in relation to other industrialized countries in those educational indicators that best predict economic and social progress. The leading indicators include high attendance and completion rates in secondary and postsecondary education; high quality teaching; a streamlined K-16 system; high content standards; and effective dropout prevention programs. To erase the widening gap in education attainment, the country needs "education-deficit hawks" to take seriously the alarms.

To see more of the Akron Beacon Journal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.ohio.com. Copyright (c) 2010, The Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com, e-mail services@mctinfoservices.com, or call 866-280-5210 (outside the United States, call +1 312-222-4544).

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